Patent

A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. This is FindLaw’s collection of Patent articles, part of the Intellectual Property section of the Corporate Counsel Center. Law articles in this archive are predominantly written by lawyers for a professional audience seeking business solutions to legal issues. Start your free research with FindLaw.

Intellectual Property

Patent Articles

Strategies for Patent Protection

Authorities have argued that ownership and control of new technologies are the vital key to success in business. Every company, whether or not directly involved in technological research, should have a process established whereby information ...
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Supreme Court Rules on the On-Sale Bar

Watch out when you or your company offers a new or improved product for sale -you may lose the chance to protect the product with a patent without realizing it. Under the U.S. patent statute (35 U.S.C. §102(b)), a valid patent cannot be obtained for ...
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Supreme Court to Speak to Scope of Patent Claims

Does a patent mean more than it says, or more accurately, does the protection afforded by a patent exceed the literal meaning of the claim language? The short answer is yes! For many years, the meaning of patent claims has been expanded beyond its ...
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Supreme Court Upholds Doctrine of Equivalents

The Supreme Court of the United States, in the eagerly awaited decision in Warner-Jenkinson Co., Inc. v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co., No. 95-728, slip op. at 1 (Sup. Ct. March 3, 1997), unanimously upheld the continued applicability of the "doctrine ...
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The Brothers Chudnovsky

The brothers have all sorts of inventions worthy of both patent protection and commercialization. There is only one problem. They are not fans of the patent system and are reluctant capitalists. This is a story about how the Chudnovskys came to ...
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The Doctrine of Equivalents Lives On in Supreme Court Patent Decision

On March 3, 1997, the United States Supreme Court rendered its anxiously awaited patent law opinion in Warner-Jenkinson Company, Inc. v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co. This case involves the very complex "doctrine of equivalents." At risk of ...
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The Full Markman: Naked and Revealed

Few cases in the last twenty years have elicited as much interest as that of Markman v. Westview, 52 F. 3d 967, 34 USPQ2d 1321 (Fed. Cir. 1995) ("Markman I"), aff'd 116 S.Ct. 1384 (1996) ("Markman II"). In an opinion of some length, and with the ...
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The Impact of Non-Traditional Patent Litigation on Cost/Benefit Analysis

Contributed by FindLaw Staff When a company receives a cease-and-desist letter, the most dreaded question that intellectual property counsel must answer is, "What is this patent suit going to cost us?" While a traditional cost-benefit analysis may ...
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The Imperfection of Language: Festo Sets a Foreseeability Bar for Prosecution History Estoppel

In its recent decision in Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., Ltd ("Festo II"), the United States Supreme Court established a new balance between two significant and competing doctrines in patent law, the doctrine of equivalents ...
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The Internet Applications of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine

The inevitable disclosure doctrine is a judicial doctrine generally associated with a 1995 Seventh Circuit decision, PepsiCo, Inc. v. Redmond.1 Where recognized, the doctrine may provide authority under state trade secret law for restraining a ...
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