Patent Laws ? Restricting a Opponent's Patent Application | Law ...

Patent examiners do a superb job of determining whether an invention should be granted patent protection. However , examiners typically have a limited quantity of time to examine a patent application. It is common for an application to be issued as a patent without the examiner considering vital information that would probably sharply limit the scope of the patent. As a result, an overly-broad patent might be issued for technology that was actually well known and commonly practiced.

If a rival is granted such an overly-broad patent, it might put you at a definite competitive advantage. The competitor could make you limit the features or use of your product, or worse, sue you for patent infringement damages. This may result in major competitive issues.

After a competitor receives an overly-broad patent, it is difficult and pricey to contain the damage. It frequently needs a dear lawsuit in Fed Court or a reexamination proceeding to nullify the patent. However , there is a much more effective way to stop rivals from receiving overly-broad patent protection.

A competitor?s patent applications will be put out before they are inspected and issued. This gives you the chance to influence the exam process, and make sure that the patent examiner considers all of the relevant info in deciding what breadth of protection to award your rival.

Patent applications are inspected by comparing what is claimed as an invention against similar ideas and inventions that were disclosed before the patent application was filed. These previous ideas and inventions are known as previous art. A patent examiner usually reviews previous art that is generally composed of US patents and patent applications. Because of important limitations on the time that an examiner has to go looking for previous art, he typically will not review previous products, trade publications, and technical articles that are relevant to the discovery. As a consequence, crucial prior art is not considered when inspecting the patent application, leading to overly-broad patents being granted.

By monitoring a competitor?s patent publications, you may be warned to pending patent applications that may be a competitive problem. If a possibly threatening application is found in this regular monitoring, then you've got the chance to be sure that the examiner has all the topical prior art during examination of the competitor?s patent.

You can submit prior art documents to the patent office the patent examiner will consider when inspecting your competitor?s patents. Along with the documents, you should include an explanation of precisely what in the document is important and how it should change the boundaries of protection that your competitor can receive. By presenting 1 or 2 rigorously chosen points, you can greatly influence the scope of your competitor?s patent.

You need to particularly submit documents the examiner would be pretty unlikely to find on his very own, such a presentations from trade conferences, product specifications, and technical articles. These regularly pre-date the patent application, and so can sharply limit the application?s scope. But you must decide on the references fastidiously, and only present the most relevant information with that information clearly referenced and explained. Make it as straightforward and useful for the examiner as possible.

Monitoring and submitting references against competitive patents is extremely important in extremely competitive and litigious fields like software patents, where a little prevention can be worth millions. Proactive action is much less expensive than protecting against a very broad patent after that patent has been issued.

Brian Zeng is sales executive of one led light china company,he writes many articles about dimmable led lights.

Source: http://legalarticledirectory.com/2012/02/patent-laws-restricting-a-opponents-patent-application/

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