Week 8 - Patent Infringement

Hi everyone! Great to be posting on here again all the way from the East Coast where I am right now :) We had an amazing guest speaker come give his thoughts in class, and that really gave a good world perspective on everything we have been learning about so far! This week's topics are extremely interesting - patent infringement and the "patent trolls" that often go along with them. 

In this blog, I want to discuss what patent infringement means, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office:

What is patent infringement?

Patent infringement is the act of making, using, selling, or offering to sell a patented invention, or importing into the United States a product covered by a claim of a patent without the permission of the patent owner. Further, you may be considered to infringe a patent if you import items into the United States that are made by a patented method, unless the item is materially changed by subsequent processes or becomes a trivial and nonessential component of another product. A person “infringes” a patent by practicing each element of a patent claim with respect to one of these acts.  Further, actively encouraging others to infringe patents, or supplying or importing components of a patented invention, and related acts can also give rise to liability in certain cases.

What I thought was most interesting about patent infringement is that is completely REGIONAL - who would have thought? This means that all the intellectual property filed in the United States cannot be enforceable in any other region. This is quite scary for any inventor, as they need to ensure they go through the patent filing process in numerous countries so that they do not have to worry about patent infringement occurring halfway across the world! Check out my video below for my further thoughts on patent infringement.

Thanks,

Payal