Comment by freejazz
24 days ago
> you need to actively litigate infringements if you want to keep it.
No you don't. That being said, what is the point of a patent if not to enforce the right of exclusivity it grants as to the invention?
24 days ago
> you need to actively litigate infringements if you want to keep it.
No you don't. That being said, what is the point of a patent if not to enforce the right of exclusivity it grants as to the invention?
> what is the point of a patent if not to enforce the right of exclusivity it grants
Usually it's to defend against another company using a "blocking patent" by pursuing you for infringing their patent which is built upon the thing you patented, doing the next step which was always obvious to you.
So that you can continue building what you started in the first place, instead of being shut down while someone else takes your idea forward.
Not for exclusivity.
>Usually it's to defend against another company using a "blocking patent" by pursuing you for infringing their patent which is built upon the thing you patented, doing the next step which was always obvious to you.
Would be pretty hard to sue someone for practicing a patent that cites that person in prior art who concurrently was inventing the same thing and would say how obvious it ones. You're going to tell me it's not so easy, but you completely made up some really narrow and specific situation anyway...
>Not for exclusivity.
It's only your right to exclude others from it that gives a patent any defense... it's all about exclusivity. That's the fundamental nature of property law.
I've been in several patent lawyer meetings where we discussed blocking patent strategies and their mitigation when deciding what to patent, so I don't think it's made up.
Company A publishes invention 1, when they know inventions 2, 3, 4 follow naturally in their own roadmap but those things aren't obvious to other people yet. Invention 1 is just a stepping stone in company A's larger vision, and it's not useful by itself, but they can't publish (or patent) everything at once, it takes time to develop them. It's also not permitted to patent 4 inventions in one patent. There are time, expense and R&D factors.
Company B studies invention 1, realises invention 2 follows naturally (as does everyone who looks at invention 1), and company B patents invention 2 before anyone else.
They can do this because inventions 2, 3, 4 are not obvious to persons skilled in the art who haven't seen invention 1. They are only obvious to anyone who works with invention 1.
The standard is not "if you knew about invention 1, would 2 be an obvious next step", it's "would 2 be obvious with general industry knowledge alone".
When that happens company A is stuck, whether they patented invention 1 or just published and/or used it.
With their prior art, they can continue to use invention 1, even if they didn't patent it, but it's not much use by itself. They can't develop it further in the directions they'd had in mind all along. And sometimes company B's patent and company A's prior art will mean company A can continue to use invention 1 but nobody else can.
A defensive strategy is for company A to patent invention 1, even if they hate patents, just so that company B can't use invention 1 when they need it in invention 2. This doesn't stop company B from patenting invention 2 before company A, by the way. It just creates leverage for company A to persuade company B to license invention 2, instead of company A having to abandon its entire roadmap and switch to a different kind of product.
> I's only your right to exclude others from it that gives a patent any defense... it's all about exclusivity
Yes, but not all companies want to exclude. Some even want to share their work openly as they proceed. But even sharing openly and creating prior art as you go is not safe.
The natural line of development they have mapped out can be shut down by others seeing the way ahead and blocking it, which is a strategy, as I said, that I have seen discussed in real patent lawyer meetings.
For those companies, "what is the point of a patent if not to enforce the right of exclusivity it grants" -> the point is not to enforce exclusivity over anyone, because they don't want to. It's to use the granted rights as defensive leverage so they can continue developing, publishing and using their own work.
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Not saying it is not used for this purpose, but this just proves how broken the system actually is.
Yeah you're right, I was thinking of trademarks. I just think the system is very cumbersome and antiquated, these days it mostly serves to benefit patent lawyers rather than inventors and small businesses, aside from highly regulated fields where things move slower.
> Yeah you're right, I was thinking of trademarks. I just think the system is very cumbersome and antiquated
It's always something like this, from someone who didn't even realize they weren't actually talking about patents in the first place.
That poster mixed it up with trademarks, for which enforcement is required to maintain its validity.