Things To Consider Prior To Filing A Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Posted by | Posted in Marketing and Advertising | Posted on 30-11-2009
Patents provide legal validity to the right of an inventor to stop others from making use of his or her original invention for their own advantage. They provide the inventor the option to sue a person or a company for infringement of his patented product or its manufacturing process. However, there are a few things that need to be considered before resorting to legal action against a patent infringement.
Firstly, you are needed to make sure that your patented product has been replicated literally. In other words your original product should have been copied in all its aspects including the apparently insignificant ones. It is only in certain special cases that an infringement that is not strictly literal is treated as a genuine infringement of a patent. However, the infringing product should have similar features and produce the same result as the patented product for such an allegation of infringement to be upheld in the court of law.
Secondly, you should have some direct connection with the patented commodity to be able to sue the infringer, and you must not be a complete outsider. You can either be the sole owner of the patented product or a licensee – exclusive or partial – of the product to be able to file a suit for violation. You also need to file a case within the time period allotted by the limitation law of the country, after which any claim would become invalid.
Though, you have an alternative of proceeding against the owner or even the user of the infringing product, you can take any such legal action only when the patent has not already expired. Once the period of patent expires, no legal action can be taken against any infringement.
Last but not the least, though patents are based upon the strict liability principle, you should keep in mind that the use of a patent for conducting research is allowed and it does not constitute an infringement.
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