Patent litigation is a daunting process mainly due to the difficulty in understanding, constructing of claims, and explaining technical concepts and terms. In today’s competitive business world, you cannot afford to let a lengthy court battle hold the working of your business and impact your revenue. It is crucial to hire patent litigation support services to produce the most favorable outcome for your business in the courtroom.

You should hire patent experts to help you with your patent litigation case and achieve desired outcomes. They will provide you with patent infringement analysis, patent reverse engineering and intellectual property invalidity analysis.  They will provide you reverse engineering services for a variety of technologies. They will review and summarize all necessary documents pertaining to your patent litigation case.

Along with patent litigation support services, a patent expert will also support your patent litigation case with pre-litigation analysis, prior art analysis, consulting, expert reports and deposition testimony. You can also count on them if you want to complete the process of patent filing in India. They will assist you from the beginning till the end. They will assist you with everything you need to obtain a patent.

If you are about to bring a new product to the market or are an investor, you will think of conducting a patent search.  So it is important for you to know how many types of patent searches are there.

There are three main types of searches. They are patentability search, patent validity search and freedom to operate search.  The main dissimilarity between these patent searches relates to the difference between what is patentable and what infringes. The patentability search is the most common affordable search for businesses and startups. This search will help you figure out whether your concept is unique over what already exist.  You need to first identify key features in your concept that you think are novel.

The purpose of patent validity search is to measure the validity of a patent’s claim by looking for a prior art showing the claimed elements. And the purpose of a freedom to operate search is to determine how to avoid patent infringement. The focus of this search will revolve around the patent claims.

Unlike a patentability search or patent validity search where the target is on the prior art disclosures, the aim of freedom to operate search prevails in the claims which requires more time to analyze. So the cost of conducting an FTO search is more than other two searches.

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One of the most common questions asked by a businessman about patent validity search is the timing. They want to know when they should go for a patent search. Although it is a reasonable question, but there is no definite answer for this as it is a matter of choice and largely depends on its purpose. Mostly, the inventors look for a patent search once they have an invention that they think is worth patenting. But, sometimes they opt for patent search even when their invention is not completed.

You should always get the patent search conducted by a service provider with good hands-on experience on patent validity search and patent infringement claim charts. The service provider will conduct a patent and non-patent literature search to identify whether a patent, which one might be charged with infringing, is valid or not. Along with the search, the expert will also help you to prepare patent infringement claim chart and other reports according to your needs.

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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. 

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.

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.

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 drafting is a daunting task. There are many ways to draft and it depends entirely on the draftsman’s capability to clearly word each sentence so that it is easily understood. Actually, there is no absolute appropriate right way to patent drafting/ preparation, but there are some basics which every professional involved in this process should keep in mind.

The first step of drafting is to identify what your invention is all about. Are you going to launch a product or a process? Once you are clear about the field of the invention you wish to protect, the next step is to find out the existing state of the art. Here it is strongly recommended to hire a qualified and experienced patent validity search analyst to do the job for you. The expert will be a great hand to conduct the search for prior arts.

Once you have identified all the fields of the invention, you need to draft a small introduction of your invention, claims, and drawings if there is any. Then you need to seek the help of a patent drafting/preparation expert to do the needful for you. The expert will look into all the aspects and then start filing an application for you.

As already discussed above, patent drafting/preparation is not that easy. So let an expert do this job for you.

Technology-based companies use patent validity searches to find out whether a patent can be invalidated because the invention was not new and inventive when the patent was granted. Generally, there are three situations in which companies use this effective tool. One is to invalidate the patent when threatened with infringement, the secondly is while preparing for patent enforcement, and third is prior to patent licensing.

If you have been charged for infringing a patent, you can use the search to try to invalidate that patent. Secondly, before you charge someone for infringing your patent, you should carry out validity search to find out how strong your legal claims are. You will come to know the exact situation before you start incurring huge legal fees. It will also identify previously unknown prior art that might create problem to your defence.  Before licensing the technology, a patent validity search will help you find out whether the licensor has a legitimate claim to the patent or not.

It is crucial for you to hire the services of experts who have extensive knowledge and experience in the field of patent research / analytics and patent validity search. You will have the confidence you are in right hands for your requirements. They will help you discover whether prior art exists somewhere in the world or not if you have been charged for patent infringement.

So you will agree now that a professional validity search will save you a lot.

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