Things To Take Into Account Before Filing A Lawsuit For Patent Infringement

Patents enable an inventor to check unlawful use of his or her invention by others for their own personal gains in an illegal and unauthorized way. They allow the inventor to prosecute a person or firm for attempting to make such illegal use of the product or the process. However, you should keep certain essential aspects in mind when going for a legal action to deal with the problem of infringement.

Firstly, you are required to make sure that your patented invention has been replicated literally. This is to say that your product should have been imitated in all its aspects including the apparently insignificant ones. In certain cases even if not all these aspects have been imitated by the violating party, the patent can still be treated as having been infringed. However, you will have to prove that the major aspects of the imitation are same as the patented product in all elements and produce the same outcome as the patented product.

Secondly, you should have some legal interest in the patented product to be able to prosecute the offender, and you should not be a complete outsider. In other words, you ought to be the owner or licensee of the patent for being eligible to defend the product. You also have to take into account the law of limitation of the jurisdiction and file a suit within the time allotted for such cases, as otherwise the claim would be treated as invalid.

You can take action against the manufacturer as well as the user of the product that you see as infringing your product, but you can do so only as long as your patent subsists according to law. Once the span of patent expires, no legal action can be taken against any infringement.

Last but not the least, though patents stand on the strict liability principle, you must remember that the use of a patent for research purposes is permitted and it is not considered as tantamount to infringement.

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