This patent strategy can save you from paying huge Royalties
Planning to launch a new product and concerned about the huge IP prevailing in the domain? Does the thought of accidentally Designing/producing an infringing product ever bother you? What if there was a patent strategy that could help you? Well, if you’ve found yourself caught up in similar situations, this article can help you. Just like […]
ETSI Email Archives: A secret ingredient to crack SEP Litigation
“More than 75% of SEP litigations involve 3GPP standards, including these days’ hot topic i.e., 5G standard and its predecessor i.e., 4G, 3G, and 2G.” – IPWatchdog The stakes in high-profile litigations in the Telecom domain are so high that invalidating an SEP (Standard Essential Patent) becomes challenging. A miss of a single document (or, […]
How we approach Chemical/Markush structure searching?
According to reports, it takes ~10 years and $2.6 Billion for a new drug to complete its journey from initial discovery to its market launch. Given the timeline and the resources at stake, you want to make sure you extract maximum ROI from the drug. The logical step would be to get a patent on […]
Using Non Patent Literature for invalidating Whey Protein formulation patent
Have you ever faced a situation where you are trying to invalidate a formulation patent and end up not having even a single prior art disclosing the exact same proportions of ingredients? Despite a thorough search, chances are this happens with the best of us. Searching prior art for formulation patents is a whole different […]
How preprint servers gave us an edge in an invalidation search
As searchers, each of us has an array of tactics and strategies at our disposal. Implementing the right tactic at the right resource could open doors to the prior art that you thought might not have existed despite a thorough search. While each of the searchers has their own set of strategies they like to […]
Prior-art in News articles: How purchasing a new phone led to a killer prior-art?
Imagine this – You have a patent to invalidate. What are the possible search avenues you will explore to ensure a comprehensive search such that no prior art is missed? If you’re a traditionalist, you will list down all the possible databases and search tools where there are chances of finding prior art. However, if […]
How to strategize a search when there is no prior art for invalidation?
In the practical world, circumstances are not always in our favor. Sometimes, indeed, we don’t have suitable weapons to fight the battle. On the contrary, the opponent’s counterattack is so strong that we get a sense of vulnerability. Co-relating the above lines to high-profile litigation cases, oftentimes there are circumstances, where round after round of […]
Patent invalidation hacks in the semiconductor industry
Patent filing in the semiconductor industry has exploded in recent years as new technologies like the internet of things, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have rapidly expanded in the chip market. There are an estimated 50 billion connected devices globally, according to Ericsson. Chips are no longer the preserve of mobile phones, but can also […]
What are the roadblocks in sequence searching and how to overcome them?
Imagine this – You are a leading biopharmaceutical player whose R&D team has developed a novel product. Before launching the product, you want to make sure your product is not infringing on anyone else’s patents. There are various costs involved in manufacturing and marketing this product, and you do not want to get entwined in […]
How to Invalidate Pharma Patents on “Obvious to Try” grounds?
As a litigator, you love killer prior art, don’t you? A perfect Tier-I reference(s) would make life so easy and court proceedings bliss. But what if killer prior art does not exist? The next possible solution would be to prove ‘lack of inventive step’ based on obviousness. In pharmaceutical patents especially, obviousness is a hot […]
Finding system prior-art in old battered phones (Patent invalidation)
Imagine this – A leading smartphone player comes to you with a litigation-grade search project for a smartphone-related patent. If the fact that this patent was in litigation does not sound challenging enough, here’s some additional info – The patent-in-suit has already been through multiple rounds of searching by numerous IP vendors, and the patent stood […]
How System Prior Art can help videogame companies avert patent litigation?
“Gamers are the most passionate people in the world and it’s painful when you make them unhappy”. Jack Tretton, President, and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America (2013) We have to agree with Mr. Tretton’s characterization, for a lot of us, are a part of this gaming coterie. Talking about our coterie, another segment you […]
How to find prior art without spending countless hours on citation analysis?
Have you ever been lost in the ocean of cited references in a patent invalidation search? Citation analysis, although a powerful strategy, is often limited to the second or third generation of cited patents. It is difficult to go beyond because as you go from the third to fourth generation patents, the number of patent […]
How we found a prior art in patent invalidity case from a previous lawsuit
Has this ever happened to you during a litigation grade search that you found prior art in complaint documents? Yes, those very documents which in a previous infringement lawsuit was used to invalidate the claims of a patent? Not yet? Grab a cup of Joe as today I’ll narrate the tale of how we found […]
How we used literature available after the cut-off date to find X references?
“Do you think prior-art searches are only about looking at relevant literature available before the cut-off date?” – I asked the newly joined members of my team. All bewildered by the question, responded with a nod in unison. “Well, you all are kind of right. This is the reason most of the searches are focused on […]
Designing a Product – How Ignoring Patent Clearance Search could be fatal?
You (or your company, for that matter) are working on developing a product. A result of a ton of brainstorming, a dozen or more presentations to senior management, and a couple of approvals – You have high hopes for the product. A significant innovation in your niche, you are pretty sure the sales numbers would […]