Key Elements of Patent Infringement Analysis Report

Think of this scenario. You are a patent holder and you suspect someone may be infringing on your exclusive rights related to your invention. And then you contact your patent prosecution support partner or your patent attorney to help you prevent or stop this kind of illegal behavior. Hopefully, your patent support partner recommends for an infringement analysis. You might think analysis may be a waste of time and money because your requirement is just to stop the infringing behavior. But your thinking is wrong here. When you will go through the details provided by your patent attorney after the analysis, your opinion will change. The report will contain many elements for your reference. This will help you appreciate the importance of such an effort.

Here are a few elements that you will see in the infringement report provided by your patent prosecution support and analysis service provider.

Patent Infringement Claim Chart or Evidence of Use (EOU) chart

The patent infringement claim chart or Evidence of Use (EOU) chart provides a straightforward mapping of all the independent and/or dependent claims of the patent to the infringing product and/or process of the competitor. These charts are in the form of table, with the language of a patent claim broken down step-by-step in the first column and the description of the infringing product and/or process in the second column. A given claim is infringed only when each row of the table shows an element in the first column that is matched with a competitor’s product and/or process in the second column.

Materials pertaining to infringement

Although the patent infringement claim chart may summarize everything about the act of infringement of your competitor, still your patent search service provider will seek to find many things about the infringing product or process, system and device within time and budget constraints. Many objects from your competitor’s business operation that may be useful in proving infringement may include examples of diagrams, photographs, user and maintenance, sales content and advertisement. 

Other than the two important points discussed above, the infringement analysis report will also include a damage analysis, presentation of possible actions you may choose to take next and also recommendation for confirmation on validity of the patent. When we talk about the presentation of possible actions that you can take next, it is all about cease and desist letter, propose licensing to the competitor, plan sale of the patent to a competitor or proposing some other collaborative arrangement with the competitor.

Hopefully, you might now be satisfied why you should adhere to the suggestion provided by your patent search service provider about the infringement analysis.