Patents Drafted by Qualified IP Lawyers Will Protect Your Invention
by
Tim Bishop
People who are tring to steal your business idea can infringe a patent in several ways. However, if you have your patent drafted by specialist IP lawyers, you are more likely to be able to defend against this theft successfully.
If you invent or develop a new service, concept or product6, it is vitally important to take steps to protect it. You also cannot over-estimate the value of contacting a professionally qualified IP Lawyer for intellectual property advice – the money you spend now will be repaid several-fold.
Adequate protection will ensure that you can exploit the financial opened up by your development, and prevent others piggybacking on your success. It may be that patenting is the best of several ways to protect the ideas you have developed, and a properly registered patent provides you with protection against several forms of infringement.
One way in which a patent can be infringed is by deliberate copying, or by developing something that is an extremely close approximation of the patented product. If the latter, it could be that the copying company has been advised that the original patent is not sufficiently strong to mount a strong defence in court, in other words that it was not well drafted.
If the situation is one where several features of the product have been copied, then there is a strong argument for infringement, and so the matter may well be settled over a discussion about whether the patent claims themselves are valid. Alternatively, there may be an attempt cover up the evidence of infringement, despite there being a close copy; this can often happen where some material concerning the patent is disclosed in the course of business negotiations. In particular, if a patented product or process has obvious commercial benefits, then it will be in the commercial interest of less than scrupulous business people to work around the patent and develop something similar that achieves the same end. This area in particular gives rise to the most litigation, as expert IP Lawyers argue about whether there is an infringement or not.
Finally, there is a situation that sometimes arises, of accidental infringement. The old adage of “there’s no such thing as an original idea” may come into play here, as many people with a newly patented product will naturally start looking out in their market sector, to see whether there is any rival product that could be claimed to be infringing on their patented product, service or method. If the method that has been patented provides a solution to a common problem – and tapping a lucrative market sector – then it is all the more likely that more than one company is working on the same problem at the same time; and their results could have used the same chemistry of physics. And while the solution may look very similar, it is always possible that it was reached by a very different route.
Contact the specialist
IP Lawyers
at Bonallack and Bishop for
intellectual property advice
you can trust. Tim Bishop is senior partner at the firm, responsible for all major strategic decisions. He has grown the firm by 1000% in 13 years and has plans for further expansion.
Article Source:
ArticleRich.com