Patent prosecution is the process of interaction between an applicant and the patent office through his/her legal representative(s) with respect to a patent application. It involves highly complex, technical and legal issues. Basically, it is a process of writing and filing a patent application and pursuing protection with a patent office. Primarily, pre-grant prosecution aims to negotiate with the patent office for grant of the patent.

Patent prosecution is distinct from patent litigation, which describes the legal action relating to the infringement of patents. It requires a complete understanding and in-depth knowledge of procedures and potential pitfalls. With the global emphasis on innovation, patent protection continues to grow at a considerable rate that has made it very crucial and challenging. Patents are the valuable assets for any business and patent prosecution sets the stage to protect and enforce these assets/innovations.

Patent prosecution services primarily include performing technical analysis and responding to office actions.

Other allied services include –

•  Auditing patent portfolios
• Carrying Patent Research / Analytics, rendering patentability, validity, and non-infringement opinions
• Delivering in-house educational training and seminars on patent laws and related issues
• Resolving ownership disputes regarding patient rights

At the end, getting assistance through a reputed patent attorney or IP consulting firm can be a right decision for protecting your patents/innovation or assets.

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Patent litigation is a complex and integral part of IP protection. It is often a drawn out process due to its several complexities in understanding, construing the claims, strength in evidence and explaining terms and concepts.

However, in today’s pace of the business world, neither you nor your client can afford a lengthy court battle holding up the operations, budgets, and overall strategies. Also, if you are engaged in IP litigation then you need patent litigation support services which can produce favorable outcomes for your company or client in court.

There are a number of competent and trusted attorneys and IP consulting firms who can deliver a wide range of patent litigation support services for intellectual property disputes. With their deep industrial knowledge and understanding, in-house counsels with a team of professionals can provide invalidity searches/prior art searches, damages valuations, and insight that can change the entire litigation strategy.

Some of the patent litigation support services offered by attorneys include:

• Analysis of patents and providing clients with possible claim construction in an easily understandable format
• Reviewing and summarizing all necessary documents pertaining to the case
• Preparation of patent infringement claim charts (Evidence of Use or EOUs) that provides the comparison between the claims of the subject patent and relevant products that may be infringing subject patent’s claim.
• Analysis of Markman hearings, expert opinions, testimony, and affidavits
• Drafting assistance in infringement complaints

Lastly, IP litigation is a very expensive process and needs an in-depth understanding of various IP issues, that can be best handled through an IP consulting firm or an attorney.

As a business, there are many things to consider before filing a patent. Start with,  you need to be aware of the purpose of a patent and know the meaning of all relevant terms to this process like patent validity search, freedom-to-operate ,patent landscape and so on. In simple words, the patent gives you the right to prevent people from stealing your idea. You have an idea! You feel it’s worth protecting. How much could your idea be worth? You need to assess that before you file a patent for it. Take help of a professional service provider to understand the process of patent filing in India and other countries before choosing to get it.

It is always a sensible idea to invest in a patent attorney to file your patent application for you.  The patent laws are complex in nature and change periodically. Many think they can patent the idea themselves. Do not make this mistake. You should even not trust the advertisements on the web that suggest you can patent the idea yourself. It is always recommended that you do some research work prior to patenting the specific implementation of your idea. Just because you have not seen your type of invention in the market does not mean it has not been patented yet. And on top of that, different countries have different patent laws and protection offered.

For example, the guidelines for patent filing in India will be different from patent filing in any other country. So a professional with good knowledge and experience in the patent industry can help you in the filing process without any hassle. Another thing that you should keep in mind is the cost for filing a patent as there is no idea to squeeze your budget. Be ready with your funds as these are costly services. Keep an eye on all these tips as valuable is your idea so is your time and money.

You must have heard a number of IP professionals using the term “patent landscape” on a regular basis. Now, what does this term signify and why is it increasingly becoming popular?

Patent Landscape

Patent landscape is a survey of patents in a given technological field. This helps businesses to have a deeper understanding about their competitors, strategies and future products and business goals. This study also helps to identify some of the future threats to their business and accordingly devise strategies to accomplish their business objectives. Patent landscape analysis plays a vital role in helping businesses understand the trends and opportunities.

Patent Landscape has a defined objective which normally includes some commercial, public policy or marketing objective. The objective is used to define a relevant technology and the definition of the technology is used to create a patent search aimed at finding patents relevant to the technology.

Patent validity searches are most popular with a technologies-based organization. The patent landscape analysis reports give accurate information on the patent portfolios of top companies in this technology. This will also help you in having an insight into patent portfolio activities of your competitors. These will help you make the informed decision regarding business strategy, R&D investments, mergers, acquisitions and product development.

In order to ensure that your job of getting a patent landscape done is carried out in a professional way, you need to hire an expert. An expert having extensive experience in this field will help you in understanding freedom to operate issues, determine your competitor’s strength and weaknesses and study the current market. A professional patent search and analysis company will have the technical, business and legal expertises to not only help you but also to interpret the results in a simple language so that you can understand it easily. These experienced professionals use effective patent research/analytics tools to perform the evaluation of patents. This will also help you in understanding the key attributes related to the business field.

The output of patent landscape analysis is a comprehensive written report which outlines the outcomes of the analysis and suggests how a business can place itself within the desired sector.

Why are these so useful?

These can provide a very unique and valuable perspective on technology and its commercial interest. These help the applicants to protect their innovations. Government permits patents for different innovations and inventions in order to:

• Encourage investment in research and innovation
• Encourage publication of new ideas

Lastly, these can provide a technology and commercial overview which is generally unavailable from other sources.

Companies should understand the risks of potential infringement prior to launching a new product or service into the marketplace. Freedom to operate searches are the tools used to determine the risks of main patent infringement prior to launching a new product or service in the market. This kind of search identifies patents with claims that may cover a technology. You need to provide a detailed description of your product or service including a list of features requiring clearance and specify the regions where you plan to launch or market your product or service.

You should have the list of your competitors, patent holders and the patents that may be relevant to your product or service. There are many situations for which you should conduct a freedom to operate searches. They are required at the time of product or service launch in any specific region, prior to finalizing a product design so that possible workarounds can be engineered, and prior to investing in a marketing strategy. 

Freedom to operate search studies can be time-consuming and costly. So companies take the time to decide when and where to perform these analyses to reduce risk and maximize value. 

What are the factors that drive them to take informed decisions?

Here are some of the top factors.  

Amount of investment and value of the product : 

It is important for a company to consider the product or service they are going to launch or acquire in terms of its value to the company. Whether it is a high-profit item or low-margin product?  A product with high margin or high volume is most likely to lead to high damage awards if a patent-infringement case goes to trial. Therefore, it is a sensible decision to take the extra step and clear the product before proceeding. Cell phones and televisions are a few examples of products in this category. 

Know what your business objectives are and risk tolerance:

Before you hire an expert to do freedom to operate analysis, a company should give serious thought to how it will handle the results. Do you seek to avoid litigation at all costs? Or are you prepared to walk away from the new product or service if the conditions are not suitable? You need to analyze all these factors before you hire a professional service provider to conduct freedom to operate search for your company.

 The service provider can also help you with other services including patent searches.

So you need to make sure the service provider has good knowledge and experience of this field. 

The main reason why many ask for search requests is pending business decisions. Patent validity searches are more popular with technology-based organizations. These searches help them answer a number of questions pertaining to their line of business.

A few important questions businesses need answer for can include  

• Where should a business unit focus their research and development efforts to gain a competitive edge in the market?
• Can they obtain a patent to keep others away from practicing their invention?
• Can they practice a technology, manufacture or sell a product or carry out a process?
• Can they keep others from practicing their technology by enforcing their patents?

A patent validity search is not that easy. There are certain rules for conducting this search. As a business unit looking forward to getting this search conducted, you need to hire the services of an expert who holds a good knowledge of this search, patent infringement claim charts and more.

What are the main rules of validity search?

Good understanding of subject and claims to be validated

It is important for the search expert to fully understand what the technical and patent issues are. At times, they are only provided with a patent number and asked to validate all the claims

.

Conduct search broadly

The searcher should be creative to conduct the search broadly as important business decisions mainly require extensive and detailed searches. The professional must use the resources intelligently to develop the strategies.

Give more emphasis to details

The patent validity search expert should conduct searches in deep detail as these searches require examination of the finer points of patents and literature documents.

Know what report the client wants

It is crucial for a patent validity search expert to know what kind of report the client is looking for. An expert should always provide the report to a client in a non-characterizing format as you never know which side of a litigation case your report might be used for.

There are many more rules for conducting patent validity searches. An expert conducting these searches very well knows about them.

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Freedom to operate search is a customized solution offered by search providers to businesses to give them peace of mind about the production technology they use or the product they produce. This search gives them the assurance that is safe to produce a product without violating third party intellectual property rights. In simple words, freedom to operate search is carried primarily for the purpose of evaluating the risk of market entry. There are many other benefits of conducting this study. You will have a better understanding of competition in given field of industry. It also shows how packed the market is and who are the biggest investors in the market. You will also get a sense of new products that will be launched by other companies in the market.

Different steps and cost of FTO search

Search providers complete such analysis in many steps. First of all, the principles are analyzed. The search expert takes a look at the technology or the product a company is planning to use or produce.  After that, the expert makes a patent search and collects all accessible information about the existing intellectual property rights that are in force. Next, the expert makes a technical comparison analysis to find out whether the technology or product the company is planning to use or produce is violating a patent or not. If it is found that it is infringing any patent, the expert then examines in which country the corresponding patent is valid and how long the protection will last. Finally, the patent expert recommends how to act further.  Conducting analysis or search is not an easy task. So it is an expensive affair. The total cost of freedom to operate search might vary depending on complexity and the work involved. The costing will be calculated based on the amount of time and efforts a search expert has to put into the analysis.

Results of FTO search

Once the analysis is over, the expert will provide recommendations with some risk evaluation. Some possible recommendations may include many aspects. For example, consider buying a license or a patent. The expert can also recommend on changing the product or technology in a way that it is away from infringements, limit activities to certain markets where technology is not protected or plan entry to certain markets only after expiration of relevant IPRs.

It is important to choose a professional service provider for conducting freedom to operate search to make sure there is no or negligible risk entering a market with a new product or a new technology. 

Patent landscape is an analysis of patents in a given technological field that seeks to answer one or more business objectives. This study helps businesses to know more about their competitors, their strategies, and their future products. Companies can identify areas that can pose a threat to them in future and accordingly refine strategies to meet their business goals. Patent landscape analysis plays a vital role in helping businesses understand the trends and opportunities.

These reports give accurate information on the patent portfolios of the top companies in the technology. You also get an insight into the patent portfolio activities of your competitors. They will help you in making informed decisions regarding business strategy, R&D investments, mergers, acquisitions and product development. When you are conducting a search in the initial stage R&D, it will be more fruitful. You will get a chance to shape your business plan intelligently and align it with your intellectual property strategy.

You need to hire an expert in order to make sure your job of patent landscape analysis is done in a professional way. A good service provider working in the field of patent infringement claim charts and landscape have the right tools to analyse the patent situations across any particular technology field. An expert company with good hands-on experience in this field help their clients in understanding Freedom to Operate issues, determine competitors strengths and weaknesses and study the current market.

A professional patent search analysis company will have the technical; business and legal expertise to not only help you with the analysis but will also interpret the results in a simple language so that you can understand easily. They use effective landscape analytical tools and a range of proprietary and subscription databases to perform the evaluation of patents that define any particular technology field. This helps a client understand the key attributes relating to any business field.

The output of patent landscaping analysis is a comprehensive written report outlining the findings of the analysis and suggesting how a business can place itself within the business sector. The report is a set of all information in easy to understand format for senior management and other key non-patent professional team of an organization.

You should place your needs in the hands of a trusted patent search company. They have an expert team of analysts that performs data mining, visualization, and analysis to generate an analysis report to help you identify competitive and technological trends.