In the past few years, intellectual property has become significant. And hence you as a business organization need to understand the importance your IP protection. Patent protection is one of the ways through which you can protect your IP. You just need to file the application with USPTO and you will get the patent grant for your IP. However, dear IP owners don’t mistake that it involves only securing your patent and enforcing your rights over your IP. Patent filing strategy is the thing that large companies focus a lot. They involve strategically efficient strategies that help them build stronger patent portfolios.
Do you know what these strategies are? Even if you don’t, then not to worry, we totally understand your concern. That’s why we have come up with this article on, “Patent Filing Strategy to Follow”. Read this till end, and get to know about the important steps you need to take while building your patent portfolio.
Also read: PATENT FILING SERVICE OF A PATENT PARALEGAL
Understanding Patent Filing Strategy
For any company of any domain, patent filing strategy is their most important concern when it comes to acquiring patent for their new IPs. Hence, it is a series of steps that a company takes to protect its inventions. This helps them to enforce their rights over their IP and hence remain at a stronger position in their technological domain.
Patent filing strategy that a company can choose depends majorly on their size, business requirements, industrial demand, and more importantly their size. So, if a large size company is there, they will definitely adopt more robust patent filing strategy as they have lot of money and resources to spend. However, when we talk about small scale companies, they settle with cost-efficient strategies, yet very effective strategies as per their business model.
Also read: Office Action Response: Strategies of Best IP Paralegal
What are different types of patent filing strategies?
Depending upon its nature, patent filing strategy is divided into two types, offensive strategy and defensive strategy. Thus, read this section carefully to understand which strategy will suit best for your company:
Offensive Patent Strategy:
This strategy is employed to stop your competitors from entering your technological domain as well as in your business sector. Thus, in this patent filing strategy, you as an organization file patent applications for all of your relevant inventions. You need to do it as early as possible, and secure their patent rights on your name. Hence, your competitors won’t be able to use these technologies on their name. Thus, you automatically eliminate your competitors in market by employing offensive strategy.
You might feel that, filing for such a large number of application and later maintaining their patent rights will be a cost burden on you. Not to worry, you can use these patent grants to generate revenue for your organization. You can do so by, recovering cost of the patent filing by either selling your patent. Or you can also license your patent to third party and demand licensee fees monthly or annually.
Defensive Patent Strategy
Unlike offensive patent strategy where the main aim was preventing the competitors from entering your technical domain. The aim in defensive patent filing strategy is to prevent your competitors from acquiring patent on the same idea of yours.
Hence, the idea in defensive strategy is to file patents to ensure that you can use your invention without your competitor patenting the same idea later. And hence he cannot enforce the patent rights on you i.e. sue you as in infringer on his patent rights for the same idea.
Defensive patent filing strategy is cost effective also, as its overall cost, that includes patent filing fees and maintenance fees is comparatively less than offensive strategy.
What to do when none strategy is feasible?
Many times it happens that, smaller and emerging companies are not in a position to afford and file large number of patent applications. In such cases, they cannot use defensive as well as offensive patent filing strategy. So, if you are also in such position, you can employ the technique of defensive publication. This type of publication allows such companies to file a patent application and get it published for establishing a prior art that can later be used against other businesses.
How to imply best patent filing strategy?
A robust patent portfolio can help companies in protecting their inventions as well as core technologies. For building such portfolios, companies need to first choose the right patent strategy – offensive or defensive. It depends on their business requirements, resources, and budget. Are you one of those companies that are planning to create a robust patent portfolio? You can reach out to companies such as ours.
Choosing “Patent Paralegal Force” will give you this opportunity. Our experience of over a decade, helps you prepare patent application draft that explains future prospects of your invention. We help in making your invention look more applicable and you get patent grant easily. So, you will not be forced to spend unnecessarily on refiling of patent application by eliminating chances of office actions. Read more about our services here.
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