Patent examiners execute a congratulations of exercising whether an invention must be granted patent protection. However, examiners typically possess a short time period to look at a patent application. Very normal with a credit card applicatoin to obtain issued as being a patent with no examiner thinking about information that will most likely dramatically limit the scope within the patent. Consequently, an excessively-broad patent might be issued for technology that was basically well-known in most cases practiced.
In situation your competitor is granted this type of excessively-broad patent, it might produce a definite competitive advantage. The competitor could pressure you to definitely certainly certainly limit the choices or utility in the product, or worse, sue you for patent breach damages. This leads to serious competitive problems.
Transporting out a rival receives an excessively-broad patent, it is sometimes complicated and pricey to aid the harm. It frequently requires an pricey suit in Federal Court or maybe a reexamination proceeding to invalidate the patent. However, there is a more effective method of stopping competitors from receiving excessively-broad patent protection.
A competitor’s patent applications will most likely be printed before you are examined and issued. This provides the chance to help the examination process, and make sure the patent examiner views all the relevant information in deciding what breadth of protection allowing your competitor.
Patent applications are examined by evaluating what’s claimed just as one invention against similar ideas and inventions which have been disclosed prior to the patent application was filed. These prior ideas and inventions are called prior art. A patent examiner typically reviews prior art that consists mainly people patents and patent applications. Due to very significant limitations at approximately time the examiner needs to consider prior art, he usually will not review previous products, trade publications, and technical articles which are tightly related to the invention. Consequently, important prior art isn’t considered when analyzing the patent application, leading to excessively-broad patents being granted.
By monitoring a competitor’s patent publications, you may be alerted to pending patent applications that may be a competitive problem. In situation your potentially threatening application is found in this regular monitoring, you will want the chance to make sure the examiner has all the relevant prior art during study on the competitor’s patent.
You can submit prior art documents for that patent office the patent examiner will consider when analyzing your competitor’s patents. Coupled with documents, you’ll want grounds of precisely what within the document is relevant and exactly how it has to modify the scope of protection the competitor could possibly get. By presenting a couple of carefully selected points, you can greatly influence the scope in the competitor’s patent.
You need to particularly submit documents the examiner may be unlikely to uncover by themselves, this sort of presentations from trade conferences, product specifications, and technical articles. These frequently pre-date the patent application, and for that reason can dramatically limit the application’s scope. However, you need to select the references carefully, and just present probably most likely probably the most relevant information using this information clearly referenced and described. Make sure it is as fundamental and useful for the examiner as possible.
