Blog

One of the primary steps that companies take towards protecting their Intellectual Property rights is to patent their inventions. In addition, companies should be able to monetize their patent portfolios by making or selling products. Contrary to common belief, patents do not guarantee a product's commercial success, although they grant applicant rights to exclude others from making, using or sell...

Invalidation – an introduction An invalidation search, also known as an opposition search or validity search, is a search conducted to determine if one or more claims of a granted patent are valid. The term "prior art" refers to information relating to a patent that has been published in any language, anywhere in the world, and existed before filing the patent. This includes patents and non-pat...

It is the intention of both "Standards" and "Patents" to encourage innovation, where a "Standard" offers access to technology to drive compatibility and interoperability between devices manufactured by different companies, while a "Patent" offers exclusive rights to an inventor as a reward for their work and investment while fostering technological innovation. And a "Standard Essential Patent" (SE...

A recent conversation with one of our clients prompted us to reinforce our belief that early-stage freedom to operate (FTO) searches are business critical. Our client, a corporate R&D organization, informed us of a situation in which one of their teams spent significant time working on product development. Just as when they were getting ready to develop their marketing / commercialization stra...

Patentability An Introduction: “Patentability” refers to the substantive conditions that must be met, for an invention, to be patented. The invention must satisfy the requirements under the context of a national or international patent system. An invention is patentable if it meets the related legal conditions to be granted a patent. The invention must meet the following patentability requirem...

Freedom to Operate (FTO) – an introduction: Freedom to operate search is an imperative due diligence step to be performed for any organization prior to commercializing a newly developed product or process. Freedom to operate searches help identify any potential infringement on the intellectual property (IP) rights of another party.A Freedom to Operate (FTO) analysis involves a search of pat...