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Design-Around Patent Strategies for Patentees and Competitors
Patentees and competitors must take proactive steps to handle design-around issues related to intellectual property matters. Using a design-around strategy, a competitor can produce an equivalent product that is legally non-infringing on a patentee's issued patent. Successful design-around strategies can present time and cost savings in terms of research and development costs, legal fees and potential litigation costs and also can minimize the delay in commercializing an equivalent product. For example, by designing around, a competitor has the incentive to potentially capture a significant market share by producing an equivalent product while undercutting the patentee's profits.
The origins of incentives for designing around patents can be found in the policy objectives of the U.S. patent system. Our patent system's underlying policy considerations, balancing the interests of the patentee and public and fairness to all parties, actually encourage design-arounds. In the current system, while the patentee's property rights are protected, the public's right to design around the patent is also encouraged. Design-around improvements based on a patent are part and parcel of the patent bargain made by the patentee. The patentee obtains a monopoly to prevent others from making, using, selling or importing an infringing product while public knowledge is broadened in that technology.
Scenario: Your company has created a new invention and secured an issued patent claiming the invention. Patenting your invention is an important step in commercializing and marketing an inventive product; you have a market-driven incentive to invest in innovation. But is your patent “design-around” proof? Increasingly, companies are imitating their competitor's products by tweaking their own products just enough to avoid a patent infringement suit by a patentee. In today's competitive marketplace, a potential competitor has an incentive to design around your patent to produce an equivalent product that does not legally infringe your patent.
Major Differences In UK, U.S. Copyright Laws
This article highlights how copyright law in the United Kingdom differs from U.S. copyright law, and points out differences that may be crucial to entertainment and media businesses familiar with U.S law that are interested in operating in the United Kingdom or under UK law. The article also briefly addresses contrasts in UK and U.S. trademark law.
The Article 8 Opt In
The Article 8 opt-in election adds an additional layer of complexity to the already labyrinthine rules governing perfection of security interests under the UCC. A lender that is unaware of the nuances created by the opt in (may find its security interest vulnerable to being primed by another party that has taken steps to perfect in a superior manner under the circumstances.
Strategy vs. Tactics: Two Sides of a Difficult Coin
With each successive large-scale cyber attack, it is slowly becoming clear that ransomware attacks are targeting the critical infrastructure of the most powerful country on the planet. Understanding the strategy, and tactics of our opponents, as well as the strategy and the tactics we implement as a response are vital to victory.
Legal Possession: What Does It Mean?
Possession of real property is a matter of physical fact. Having the right or legal entitlement to possession is not "possession," possession is "the fact of having or holding property in one's power." That power means having physical dominion and control over the property.
The Anti-Assignment Override Provisions
UCC Sections 9406(d) and 9408(a) are one of the most powerful, yet least understood, sections of the Uniform Commercial Code. On their face, they appear to override anti-assignment provisions in agreements that would limit the grant of a security interest. But do these sections really work?