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Patents enable an inventor to prevent unlawful use of his or her invention by other parties for their own personal gains in an unlawful and unauthorized manner. They provide the inventor the right to prosecute a person or a company for infringement of his invention or its underlying process. However, there are a few aspects that have to be kept in mind before taking legal action against a patent infringement.

First, you have to make sure that the alleged infringement is a literal infringement of your patent. In other words, the infringing product must have imitated all features of your product. In certain cases even if not all these features have been copied by the violating party, the patent can still be considered to have been infringed. However, you will have to prove that the major aspects of the imitation are similar to the patented product in all respects and produce the same outcome as the patented product.

Secondly, you should have some direct connection with the patented commodity to be able to sue the offender, and you should not be a complete outsider. You can either be the sole owner of the patent or a licensee – exclusive or partial – of the product in order to be eligible for filing a suit for infringement. You also need to consider the law of limitation of the jurisdiction and file a suit within the time stipulated for such suits, as otherwise the claim would be considered as expired.

Though, you have an option of prosecuting the manufacturer or even the user of the counterfeit product, you can file such a lawsuit only when the patent is yet to expire. No unauthorized usage of the product can be considered an infringement after the lapse of the patent.

Regardless of the strict liability principle that patents are governed by, carrying out research work by using a patented product does not amount to an infringement under the patent laws for most countries.

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