To develop as an industry you continuously need to do R&D in your products and services. It is so to meet the growing and changing demands of your customers. It is because if you won’t then your competitors will take over the market wiping you out completely. The most common example you can think of is NOKIA being replaced by smartphones. However, once your invention is ready, you need to convert it into an intellectual property. But it is not a simple thing to do. For this, you need the assistance of a patent law paralegal.
Wondering how and why you need a patent law paralegal? For this you need to understand what is an intellectual property? This article will tell you all about IP and patent paralegals. So keep reading till end.
What is an Intellectual Property?
You keep developing new things using your resources like, intellect, time and money. These things may be an invention or trademark for your business. However, you need to protect this creation from unauthorized use. This requires a legal process to follow where a patent law paralegal assists you. Thus, when you ultimately get the legal rights for your creation, it now becomes your intellectual property.
The legal rights of your IP prevent anyone else from using your creation on his name. Further if anyone else uses your intellectual property illegally you can sue him for infringement of your IP rights. This will make him appear in the court and to settle the case he may be asked to pay you monetary compensation.
So it gives you the full protection in market and your customer base keeps on increasing. Thus your overall business and profit increases.
Why you need a Patent Law Paralegal to protect your invention?
As you read above, once you get legal rights for your invention, it is now your intellectual property. However intellectual property rights are actually chaotic understand, and it is because, IP is an intangible thing. Speaking precisely, you can’t touch it, feel it, smell it, etc. It means it is an entity that covers your creation by giving you legal rights of it.
If you also want to protect your creation/invention, then you will have to follow intellectual property law steps. It means going through legal IP prosecution of your creation at a patent office. Some of the famous patent offices are, WIPO, USPTO, EPO, etc. As per your location you can have your IP prosecution at any of these offices. If you are in USA, a federal agency the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) looks after the IP rights for your creation.
To get the IP rights for your creation, you need to file an IP application with USPTO. It also asks you to pay the registration fees as per the USPTO. Then USPTO carries out prosecution of your application till your application is found relevant. A mistake in any part of the prosecution step will reject your application.
So following legal steps to get the grant of patent rights is a very complex. IP prosecution lets you go through complex legal process which is tough to understand. For this reason you need an assistant who is well versed with IP laws and makes your task easy. This is where the role of Patent Law Paralegal becomes important for you. Want to know who are they? Keep reading to know more about them.
Who is a Patent Law Paralegal?
A patent paralegal is a professional who is trained to understand and prosecute IP matters. An IP paralegal has thorough knowledge of all the legal matters involving patents, trademarks, and other related things. You can find them working with patent attorney and IP law firms to reduce their workload and serve the clients with best IP services.
Their job role is divided primarily into following three categories:
(1) Creating intellectual property;
(2) Maintaining intellectual property; and
(3) Litigating intellectual property.
Let’s discuss all their job roles one by one, below.
Creating Intellectual Property:
The primary role of hiring patent law paralegal is their assistance in getting intellectual property to their clients. It starts with a very important role which is patent search task. In this the IP paralegal carries a thorough research of USPTO database. It gives them the surety that there are no prior arts which can later interfere with their client’s intellectual property.
Thus, they do a patent search and all the data they collect, transfer it to the patent attorney. The attorney in return uses this to correct the best patent application draft to be submitted at USPTO. Once the application reaches USPTO its scrutiny starts happening. There also, IP Paralegals help in keeping the communication channel open and communicate with clients swiftly and timely. Thus, they provide the USPTO with all the necessary documents as soon as USPTO asks for it.
Maintaining Intellectual Property:
Don’t limit their role for creating new IPs only, they are useful further. The patent paralegal helps you in meeting the needs of your clients with existing intellectual properties. They interact with your clients and ensure on-time payment of maintenance fees of patents. This keeps the patents of your clients active and it doesn’t gets expire. Thus, no one else can use your clients IP illegally even after it expires, because it gets renew certificate again.
What if your client is thinking to earn monetary benefits from his IP using a third party. The reason for same is, the client doesn’t have enough resources to use his IP for monetary benefits. Like no capital for production, marketing, etc. This is where the role of patent paralegal comes handy. They help your clients in meeting potential third party clients who can give them good return on their IP. It starts with signing a legal document, which allows the third party to use the IP in return of fees to the owner of IP on regular basis.
Litigating Intellectual Property:
There can be instances when even protected IPs also get infringed by your clients competitors. Thus, you need to be vigilant in catching any infringement on your clients IP and immediately sue the infringer. The patent paralegal conducts the infringement research and study the case completely. Their study aims at finding claims and evidences that supports client’s position in the infringement case against the infringer. This comes under the category of offensive IP litigation, where you find the infringer and sue him.
The other form of litigation is, defensive IP litigation, where your client gets sued on infringing others IP rights. The IP paralegal then conducts litigation research and finds the facts and data that proves that your client’s IP is novel. Or your client’s IP doesn’t fall under the category on which he is being sued.
In both the cases, the IP paralegal prepares your clients for IP trials that you as IP law firm alone will find hectic to do.
Summary of Patent Paralegal Job Role
By reading the article till now, you must have got a sense about the job role of patent law paralegal. There assistance includes managing clients, coordinating with clients and patent office frequently and timely. They assist in application filing, and carry out all the documents preparation work. Thus you can use them for drafting patent applications, trademark applications, etc.
You can also use them to cross check that all the relevant documents are submitted with the PTO. They respond to all the office actions and appeals punctually along with proper documents. The works that you read till now are their assistance apart from their core work.
Their core work includes, generating docket reports, and coordinating with the attorney and clients regarding court appearances and meetings.
Choosing the best Patent Law Paralegal: Patent Paralegal Force
Hiring a right patent law paralegal will help you in giving the best services to your clients. This will earn you more business as an IP attorney in the market. However, if you will choose the wrong IP paralegal, it will do more harm to you than good. Thus, you need to choose the one who is reliable and experienced. That’s why we present you the paralegal services of our, i.e. “Patent Paralegal Force”
We have earned clients in more than 45+ countries it’s all because of our reliable services. Our team includes the professionals having rich experience in IP law dealings. We provide our paralegal services using state of art tools. We totally understand your work first and then proceed with our services. Read more about our services here.