What To Do If You Think Your Patent Has Been Infringed

Patents enable an inventor to prevent unlawful use of his or her invention by others for their own economic advantage in an illegal and unauthorized way. They provide the inventor the option to prosecute a person or a company for deliberate infringement of his invention or its manufacturing process. However, you should keep certain things in mind when going for a legal action to deal with such an infringement.

Firstly, you are required to make sure that your patented invention has been replicated literally. In other words, the infringing product should have copied all features of your product. Although in special cases where some of the aspects of the invention have not been imitated, it can still be considered as an infringement. However, the infringing product should be based on similar principles and produce the same impact as the patented product for such a claim for infringement to stand in the court of law.

Secondly, you cannot be a third party and take legal action against the alleged offender, which means that you must have some direct connection with the patent. For filing such a suit, you need to be the patent owner or at least a partial or exclusive licensee of the patented product. You also need to file a lawsuit within the time span stipulated by the limitation law of the state, after which any claim would be declared null and void.

You can take legal action against the maker as well as the user of the product that you consider to be an imitation of your product, but you can do so only as long as your patent subsists according to law. No unauthorized usage of the product can be considered an infringement after the expiry of the patent.

Finally, you should also keep in mind that patents can be used for research purposes without it being labelled as an act of infringement even though the patent law relies on the principle of strict liability.

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