Patents provide legal recognition to the right of an inventor to prevent unscrupulous individuals from making use of his or her original invention for their personal gains. They provide the inventor the option to prosecute a person or a company for infringement of his patented product or its manufacturing process. However, there are a few aspects that have to be considered before taking legal action against an infringement.
Firstly, you should ensure that there has been a literal infringement of your product protected by patent. In other words your original product should have been copied in all its aspects including the apparently insignificant ones. Although in special cases where some of the features of the invention have not been imitated, it can still be treated as an infringement. However, the infringing product should have similar features and produce the same impact as the original product for such a claim for infringement to stand in the court of law.
Secondly, you cannot be a third party and take legal action against the alleged offender, which means that you must have some direct connection with the patent. In other words, you ought to be the legitimate owner or licensee of the product for being eligible to defend the product. Further, in order to make sure that your suit will get a court hearing, you need to file the suit within the time prescribed under the limitation statute of your country.
Though, you have an option of prosecuting the owner or even the user of the counterfeit product, you can take any such legal action only when the patent has not already expired. Once the span of patent has expired, no legal action can be taken against any infringement.
Notwithstanding the strict liability principle that is applicable to patents, the use of a patented product for research work does not amount to an infringement under the patent laws for most countries.
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categories: protecting business ideas,business value,Intellectual property,IP law,IP lawyer,trademarks,patents,ideas protection,copyright
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