Infringement of Patent

A patent is a document issued upon application by a government office. It describes an invention as well as creates a legal situation in which the patented invention can usually only be exploited with the authorization of the proprietor of the patent. Invention means a solution to a precise problem in the field of technology. An invention may relate to a product or a process. The protection conferred by the patent is limited in time.

There are numerous ways in which infringement of patent rights might occur. Firstly, there is the situation where a patent is intentionally infringed by a third party without any effort to avoid the infringement. This will either be directly copying of the invention or else involve minor variations or modifications thereof. This form of infringement may occur because the third party is unscrupulous. He can be advised by his patent agent that the patent in question or claims thereof is invalid. With this form of infringement there is usually no argument as to whether or not there is infringement. If all the contents of the patented invention have been copied, then there must be infringement. The only matter to be resolved is whether the claims of the patent are valid.

The second situation which arises is where the infringement is deliberate, but some attempt has been taken to avoid the appearance of infringement. It repeatedly happens that once an invention is disclosed either by sale of the product incorporating the invention, or in a published patent document, or in some other publication, third parties are given ideas. The publication usually outlines the problem and indicates a way of solving it. Third parties then may attempt to design an alternative to do the similar thing. While third parties can authentically trying to design around the patent whilst still making use of the basic idea of the inventor. Here result does not always obviously fall outside the range of the claims of the patent. This is most likely the most ordinary form of infringement faced by patent owners as well as it gives rise to the most litigation.

The last situation that arises is the case of accidental infringement. As soon as a patent owner comes across something which embodies his idea he obviously feels that his invention is being copied. This is not essentially so, since there may be many people working to solve a particular problem at the same time. For instance, research departments of different big organizations may all be working on a parallel problem. Likewise there may be more than a few companies who have been asked to tender for a contract to resolve a particular problem or to achieve certain result furthermore in so doing may come up with similar ideas to that which may have been involved in the patented invention.