Comment by abfan1127
6 years ago
I worked at Medtronic and currently work at Qualcomm. Both companies had policies matching this. Don't search patents so you are not influenced by them.
6 years ago
I worked at Medtronic and currently work at Qualcomm. Both companies had policies matching this. Don't search patents so you are not influenced by them.
Since when did that matter in patent law? Patents are public domain, and ignorance of a patent is not a defense against having infringed. Since at least 2012, the US has had a first-to-file policy instead of first-to-invent.
There's no legal reason to worry about being influenced by a patent. The only concern might be boxing your creativity where you can't think of alternative solutions to a problem once you've seen one solution. That doesn't seem like a strong enough reason for a blanket policy.
IANAL but this confuses me.
What I was told is that if you research the patent and aware of its existence then you may be guilty of willful enfringement with treble the normal penalties:
https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2016/06/supreme-court-u...
https://www.ip-watch.org/2016/07/26/us-high-court-restores-t...
More precisely, a standing policy that researching patents is forbidden is prima facie evidence that your employees couldn't have possibly known about an existing patent. That means that a plaintiff suing for willful infringement will need to find evidence that someone went out of their way to ignore the policy. That might be quite difficult.
(Of course: not a lawyer, this is not legal advice)
2 replies →
you're right, its the creativity and alternative solutions.