INFRINGEMENT ANALYSIS

Patents essentially give the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention. The only way to do this is to enforce patents when they are infringed. Patents have no value if there is no intention to enforce them.

Detecting infringement of a patent can sometimes be very obvious simply by inspecting a product. In other cases, additional work must be done, including product teardowns, reverse engineering, testing and analysis. In some cases, infringement cannot be detected at all. This is why it is very important when filing a patent application to craft claims that can maximize the chance of detecting infringement, in order to make enforcing the patent possible.

We can provide advice and guidance on detecting infringement, and can help to manage the process if needed. Our services include performing patent reviews on large portfolios to identify patents with high value. We also perform infringement analysis, where we compare patent claims with a potentially infringing product to determine whether they are indeed infringing the claims. Furthermore, we can develop claim charts that illustrate clearly how the claim is infringed.

On the other side of the fence, when a company is accused of infringing a patent, similar work must be done to disprove this accusation. This can include reviewing claim charts provided by the accusing party, performing infringement analysis to see whether there is infringement or not, developing workarounds if there is infringement. Furthermore, perhaps the best defense in such cases is to invalidate the infringed patent, which can often be done by finding prior art. All of these are aspects with which we can provide our support.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss how we can support you with patent infringement and patent monetization activities.