Patents offer legal validity to the right of an inventor to prevent unscrupulous individuals from making use of his or her invention for their own advantage. They permit the inventor to bring in prosecution against any person or company that is found to be making such illegal use of his product or the process for its manufacture. However, there are a few aspects that need to be considered before resorting to legal action against an infringement.
Firstly, you must make sure that there has been a literal infringement of your product protected by patent. In other words your original product should have been imitated in all its aspects including the apparently insignificant ones. Although in special cases where some of the features of the product have not been copied, it can still be considered as an infringement. However, this requires evidence to the effect that there are substantial similarities and that the final effect that the infringing product creates is significantly similar to the original product.
Secondly, you cannot be a third party and take legal action against the infringer, which implies that you must have some legitimate interest in the patent. For taking legal action, you need to be the owner or at least a licensee - exclusive or partial - of the patented product. You also need to take into account the law of limitation of the state and file a suit within the time stipulated for such suits, as otherwise the claim would be treated as invalid.
Though, you have an option of prosecuting the owner or even the user of the counterfeit product, you can take any such legal action only when the patent has not already expired. After the termination of the patent date, no use of the product can be termed as an infringement against the patent.
Finally, you must also remember that patents can play a role in scientific research without it being labelled as an act of infringement even though the law of patent is based on the principle of strict liability.
Discover more about Trademarks and learn how does an Patents protection increase the net worth of your business very fast.
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