New Iberia Patent Attorneys & Lawyers

What Is Inequitable Conduct?

Inequitable conduct is a plea defense for infringement lawsuits. The defendant claims the patent holder intentionally misinformed, misled, or withheld important information from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to get a bad patent. If the court rules in favor of this defense, it can void the patent in question.

How Does the Inequitable Conduct Defense Work?

Patents are supposed to encourage people to innovate and invent. They are public information, and in exchange for showing how an invention works, the inventor gets monopoly power for several years. However, many people try to abuse the patent system by getting patents that are too vague or describe invent

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Updated November 25, 2020:

What Is a Patent?

A patent is a set of exclusive rights governed by a state and granted to an inventor for a set period of time in exchange for the disclosure of the creation. If you have patented an invention, you have developed something special and different.

What Is an Invention?

An invention is a concept or object that is newly created and never made before. However, "What is an invention?" is truly a complicated question today. Another question emerges. What truly makes a thing unique or different from what came before it? The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, as well as the Patent and Trademark Office, have developed a specific language to define what makes up a genuine invention.

Patent Types

Utility Patent

• This is the most used type of patent for everyday

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What Are March-In Rights?

March-in rights are rights granted to the federal government. These allow the government to grant patent licenses to other parties or to take licenses for themselves if they helped fund the patent owner's research and development. Such licenses can even be granted to competitors if the government deems it necessary. 

Generally speaking, these rights won't be used unless there are some public safety threats that patent owners cannot handle themselves.

March-In Rights: When They're Used

Besides public safety concerns, the government may also grant patent licenses if the patent owner has not taken any practical steps towards executing the patent. They can even remove exclusive patent rights if the patent isn't deemed suitable for public use. 

In order to avoid

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What is a Patent Search?

A patent search verifies that an invention is original by checking patent databases for a similar invention before the inventor spends time and thousands of dollars applying for a patent. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will reject a patent application if a valid patent already exists for the same invention.

Some entrepreneurs may try to do their own patent search to avoid spending money on hiring an organization that performs patent searches.

However, inventors should be aware of potential problems before conducting a patent search. These include:

• Searching for patents is very difficult. Inventors commonly fail to find patents that a professional patent search organization or patent attorney would discover. The search is only as good as the keywords entered, and w

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Updated September 5, 2022:

What Is a Patent License?

A patent grants its proprietor the right to exclude others from utilizing the patented invention, while a patent license reflects utilization rights obtained by an investor for that patent. By granting a non-exclusive license, the patent proprietor basically guarantees to not sue the licensee for patent infringement.

Patent Licensing: What Is It?

Patent licensing is part of how to patent an idea and is a revocable agreement between a patent owner and a licensee to transfer interest in a patent to a licensee, who can benefit from and enforce the intellectual property rights.

A patent owner

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