While working on your latest design project, you come up with a new technique that promises to give your company a competitive advantage in the test industry. Integrating this breakthrough into your company's new products surely will elevate their capabilities as well as significantly reduce equipment costs. Since nothing of the sort has been developed previously, a patent application is filed and subsequently granted. Before celebrating your accomplishment with too many glasses of champagne, consider some sobering statistics. According to a recent article in the MIT Technology Review by Douglas Kline, a partner in a Boston law firm that litigates patent and intellectual property cases, a patent owner can expect to spend more than $2 million to litigate an infringement lawsuit in the $1 million to $25 million range and more than $4 million when the lawsuit is tabbed at greater than $25 million. Even with these staggering costs, 2,788 patent infringement lawsuits were filed in the year ending Sept. 9, 2003, about 1.5% of all the U.S. patents granted in 2003. Patent litigation can cut both ways an owner stands the risk of the patent being invalidated in court, and infringers could find their products in violation of an existing patent, possibly curtailing their operations. However, as noted in the article, most cases never go to trial, and the courts rarely demand that an accused infringer stop selling products during legal proceedings. While preparing for the patent application, take a hard look at your competitor's products, cautioned Mr. Kline. Is their technology similar or different than yours? If possible, write your patent so that it covers both. Furthermore, identify sooner rather than later any competitor's patents that may be relevant to your product development. If the possibility of infringement exists, take the necessary steps to modify your design. It's definitely not worth the potential expense and bad publicity when facing an infringement lawsuit.Make sure the patent attorney does a thorough and exhaustive search of any earlier technology even remotely relating to your invention. Give him all the help you can. Remember he probably isn't as technically savvy as you are, so provide him with as much background information as you can. Yes, his job is to research prior art extensively, but the process will proceed more smoothly with your help. Just keep this in mind: According to the article, an attorney may take only a couple of weeks to write a patent, and the Patent Office could spend as little as 20 hours to examine it before granting the patent. It's not surprising why there is so much patent litigation today. Paul Milo
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Editor
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