Question

U.S. Patent Law

An inventor designs a new product but finds a similar product already on the shelf. She asks a patent practitioner to draft a patent application to make sure that no conflict between the existing product and hers would occur. List the risks and benefits of taking this approach? Assume that the inventor came up with the new product design in 2017.

Answer 1

Let us first discuss the benefits:

By getting patent rights for the product the lady will be the legal owner of that particular intellectual property. which makes it easy for her claim the ownership and be strong on the legal grounds in case of infringement. She can also register her product by highlighting the difference with the already existing product. These are the 2 main benefits which will be enjoyed by the inventor apart from all the other benefits of an IPR such as the sale of the right to produce someone else.

The risk involved in it:

One of the major risks in this case is that the inventor of the actual product can file suit against the lady for infringement of IPR in case if product found to be the exact copy of the actual product. This is the only major risk which is spacially related to this case. apart from this particular risk, the lady does not have any specific risk but the general issue such as the unauthorized production of the product etc.