User:Ethmitch/Patent

There are two types of patents. There are utility patents, which this page covers, and design patents, which the linked page discusses. The basic differences are as such: utility patents protect the utility of a product while a design patent protects the look and design of a product. In other words, utility patents are used to protect a product based on how it can be used in the marketplace. This patent is all about preventing others from creating a product with the same function as yours to help you get more of the market. This prevents people from creating a product that can directly compete with yours, without your permission. Meanwhile, design patents are all about protecting the design of your brand and keeping other companies from using your company’s design. This means that a company can create a product with the exact same functionality and purpose as long as it has a different design. While utility patents are all about functionality, design patents cannot be functional, and in many countries must be capable of mass production. Both forms of patents are granted to the inventor, but while utility patents are, in the United States, good for 20 years from the filing date, in the US the term of protection for design patents is 15 years from the date that the design patent is granted. So before going forward, if you are looking to protect a design, please click the link for the design patent page instead of reading this page, which covers utility patents.

Add must be sufficiently disclosed in the patent application to conditions for patentability

Add minimum of 20 years to the Paris Convention

Add the three steps of the PCT Agreement:

1. Filing the PCT patent application

2. Examination during the international phase

3. Examination during the national phase.

PCT Agreement gives owners 30 months of priority than the 12 months from the Paris Convention

Patent Law Treaty (PLT) was another big part of international patent law as it standardized the filing date requirements, standardized the application and forms, allows for electronic communication and filing, and avoids unintentional loss of rights, and simplifies patent office procedures.

Make sure it mentions that patentable material must be man-made, meaning that anything natural cannot be patented. For example, minerals, materials, genes, facts, organisms, and biological processes cannot be patented, but if someone were to take this and utilize and inventive, non-obvious, step with it to create something man-made, that, the end result, could be patentable. That includes man-made strains of bacteria, as was decided in Diamond v. Chakrabarty. Patentability is also dependent on public policy, if it goes against public policy, it will not be patentable. An example of this is patent a man-modified higher life-form, such as a mouse as seen in Harvard College v. Canada.

To establish infringement, the holder of a patent must provide evidence of the following:

1.      There was a prohibited act performed

2.      Said act was done after the patent was published or granted

3.      Said act was done in the country of the granted patent

4.      And that said act falls within the scope of the patent

Sometimes, nations grant others, other than the patent owner, permissions to create a patented product based on different situations that align with public policy or public interest. These may include compulsory licenses, scientific research, and in transit in country.

Infringement can be negated by patent exhaustion, which is when the owner of a patent no longer has the right to enforce their patent, via the TRIPS Agreement. This is set up by each individual country and includes the “First Sale” Doctrine, which states that a patent is exhausted whenever the patented product is sold on one of three scales: national, regional, and international. Each of these has its own, respective, exhaustion wherein if a product is sold within a nation, that nation’s region, or anywhere in the world, then the product is no longer patentable in the nation with that level of exhaustion.

Infringement includes literal infringement of a patent, meaning they are doing a prohibit act that is protected against by the patent. There is also the Doctrine of Equivalents. This doctrine protects from someone creates a product that is basically, by all rights, the same product that is protected just with a few modifications. In some countries, like the United States, there is liability for another two forms of infringement. One is contributory infringement, which is participating in another’s infringement. This could be a company helping another company to create a patented product or selling the patented product which is created by another company. There is also inducement to infringement, which is when a party induces or assists another party in violating a patent. This could look like a company paying another party to create a patented product in order to reduce their competitor’s market share. This is important when it comes to gray market goods, which is when a patent owner sells a product in country A, wherein they have the product patented, then another party buys and sells it, without the owner’s permission, in country B, wherein the owner also has a patent for the product. With either national or regional exhaustion being the law the in country B, the owner may still be able to enforce their patent rights, however in country B has a policy of international exhaustion, then the patent owner will have no legal grounds for enforcing the patent in country B as it was already sold in a different country.

For benefits of patents there is no guarantee that it will be protected due to multiple different factors that may make a patent moot, such as national policy or national security. Patent laws differ from border to border and the differing laws need to be known. Additionally, the primary benefit of patents is seen as protection, but that is not entirely true. Patents do not protect your invention from being copied. Far from it, it makes your invention public, allowing more people to see and copy it. However, its purpose is to allow the owner of the patent to enforce patent laws on competitors and others who are producing and selling their patented invention. This means that they are paying for a patent which will allow them to take others to court for utilizing their invention. A patent cannot prevent someone from copying an invention, it only allows the owner of the patent to seek recompense for the other party violating the patent and stealing their invention. As such, patents to deter people from copying an invention, bringing them to the owner to seek an alternative solution. This may take the form of granted permission to utilize the patented invention, leasing out rights to use the patented invention, or even selling the patent to another party. All of these options are ways for a different party to utilize a patent, and the latter two are ways for patent owners to make additional money off of their invention(s). In other words, a huge benefit of patents is monetary gain through exclusive rights of selling an invention and/or leasing out a patented invention to another party who wishes to use it. A good example of this is Samsung with their OLED technology, many companies use this technology for their products, such as Apple for their phones, who is a direct competitor with Samsung, but Apple must pay for Samsung’s OLED screen technology directly to Samsung, or another company it has let produce its patented product. Apple cannot, legally, produce its own OLED displays.