Your IP Lawyers Can Help Defend a Patented Product

There are several ways in which a patent can be infringed by those seeking to steal business. A patent that has been well drafted by specialist IP Lawyers will help ensure a successful defence.

If you have invented or developed a new product, service or concept, then protecting it adequately is a vital step. And the importance of taking intellectual property advice cannot be over-estimated, as professionally qualified IP Lawyers will return the investment in their advice many times over.

Adequate protection will ensure that you can exploit the financial opened up by your development, and prevent others piggybacking on your success. If you've developed some potentially great ideas, patenting might be the best way that you can protect them - a patent that has been properly registered will protect you from many forms of infringement.

One way in which a patent can be infringed is by deliberate copying, or by developing something that is an extremely close approximation of the patented product. If the latter, it could be that the copying company has been advised that the original patent is not sufficiently strong to mount a strong defence in court, in other words that it was not well drafted.

If several features of the product have been copy, the argument could be made that the patent has been infringed - leaving the matter to be sorted out through a discussion concerning the validity of the patent claims. You might find that there has been an attempt to hide the evidence of the infringement, despite it having been closely copied; this could happen if some of the material relevant to the patent becomes known during business negotiations. In particular, if a patented product or process has obvious commercial benefits, then it will be in the commercial interest of less than scrupulous business people to work around the patent and develop something similar that achieves the same end. This area in particular gives rise to the most litigation, as expert IP Lawyers argue about whether there is an infringement or not.

Finally, there is a situation that sometimes arises, of accidental infringement. The old adage of "there's no such thing as an original idea" may come into play here, as many people with a newly patented product will naturally start looking out in their market sector, to see whether there is any rival product that could be claimed to be infringing on their patented product, service or method. If the method that has been patented provides a solution to a common problem - and tapping a lucrative market sector - then it is all the more likely that more than one company is working on the same problem at the same time; and their results could have used the same chemistry of physics. Sometimes even though the end result might look similar, it could be that it was achieved in a totally different way.


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If you are looking for intellectual property advice, contact one of the specialist IP Lawyers at Bonallack & Bishop. Senior partner Tim Bishop has grown the firm by 1000% in 13 years. He is responsible for all major decisions and plans to expand the firm further.