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| Developing new products and ideas, without infringing on existing patents |
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| Robert Karl:
Hi everyone. Firstly, I do not intend for this to be a discussion on the merits or failures of patents :horse: So here is my problem; Although I have a lot of ideas, I feel like most are unlikely to be truly original. I don't want to waste time on designs that may need to be scrapped because I overlooked some preexisting patent. Large companies can just get a patent attorney to cover themselves, but this is maybe not realistic for individuals. I would like to know from any other engineers, designers or "inventors" out there, that have designed or brought a product to market: How did you ensure your product did not infringe on existing patents? Do you care, and does this consideration impact your design process? Does anyone have a product that uses externally patented IP? |
| Rerouter:
You can always work on the principle of stupidity, If you never look, and never use any of another persons work to reach your product, then you may be able to work around things a little, If you have proof showing you reached your design without external help, then its pretty clear you had no intention of infringing a patent you did not know about. As to the proof aspect, I generally have a timelapse going while I design things, makes for some self entertainment if I forgot why I chose a particular solution This is personally the method I work off, never look, but I rarely sell things above 300 units, so very unlikely that I am going to get picked on by some larger party If you actually want the inverse, patents submitted by groups fresh out of university have a very high rate of either failing to complete the process or failing to renew if you want to take ideas that have a released patent you can point at. This is where I have looked in the past, |
| filssavi:
That is unfortunately one of the big issues with the patent system, especially now that big players (apple, microsoft and google in particular) are involved, and I don't think there is a real solution, you should do a bit of research, however it's unlikely to be really worth it unless an experienced patent lawyer can interpret the legalese. It happend to a friend of mine, he is doing a PhD in the grid side power electronics field (smart grids and stuff) and found out a microsoft patent that if litigated correctly could cover his stuff. We are shure microsoft never intended the patent to apply to that field, and they will probably never use it in a product (unless they start building power converters which is higly unlikely). However that does not matter in the least, the only thing that count with patent law is the depth of the pockets of the litigants. How the things work right now is that if your device is not already on the market, and you don't have the money for the lawyers, you basically gamble it, you sell your product, if some patent troll comes up with something you just pay what they want to extort from you (they are usually reasonable) and go on with your life, I would also set up an LLC of some description, so if shit really hits the fan the company will declare bankrupcy and you are done with it DISCLAIMER:I AM NOT A LAWYER |
| kosine:
Do some research with the online patent systems. Google patents is OK, I find the European espacenet.com site a bit easier to use. Very few patents / inventions are totally new. Most will have a whole family tree of prior art. Just search for relevant terms and see what comes up. Most will also have cited and citing references, plus the patent description usually starts with a list of already known prior art patent numbers. All patents are also grouped by classification numbers, sometimes searching through a particular class can also bring up results. Searching for other work by a particular inventor is also worth doing, since they often have other patents for similar ideas. Basically, you need to spend a good bit of time going through the archives to see what's already been done. (It's not to bad these days. Before everything went online you had to search the records on microfiche, which was not much fun!) As for what you can get away with, anything mentioned ("disclosed") can't be patented, but can possibly be used without infringement. Anything contained in the claims is what's been protected, so you can't copy that. However, all patents expire after 20 years, so anything older is now public domain. A lot of patents are also abandoned before 20 years (check the legal status links), so they're OK to copy also. On top of that, patents are country specific, so even if a live patent exists in one country you can still copy it elsewhere. (You just couldn't produce or sell anything covered by the patent in a country that is covered.) As for the "I didn't know" ignorance excuse, that won't work. Also be aware that in patent law there's no statute of limitations, so you could be sued years down the line, even after any infringed patent has expired. If you were copying it while it was still in force, then you're liable. If you feel like hiring a patent attorney, they will simply do exactly what I've described above. So DIY and save yourself a lot of money. |
| daqq:
Disclaimer: IANAL --- Quote from: Robert Karl on June 24, 2020, 10:30:51 am ---So here is my problem; Although I have a lot of ideas, I feel like most are unlikely to be truly original. I don't want to waste time on designs that may need to be scrapped because I overlooked some preexisting patent. --- End quote --- Also note that there are other things where similarly complicated things may have been published, many of them behind a paywall or not public. These include scientific publications, magazines... So, not just patents prevent you from patenting stuff. --- Quote from: Robert Karl on June 24, 2020, 10:30:51 am ---How did you ensure your product did not infringe on existing patents? Do you care, and does this consideration impact your design process? --- End quote --- 1. You search existing patents in the area where you want to use/develop the idea, desperately trying to think of convoluted wordings that could have been used to describe your idea. Then you give up because the way that the patents are worded is intentionally vague enough to be borderline useless, but still useful as an attack vector. 2. I care, It does - I check stuff within my limited capability against google patents, but there is absolutely no way to be 100% sure that there aren't any (local/global) patents or any variations there of (patents are not the only way to protect your idea) describing your idea. Basically checking your design/implementation/idea against everything, even with the awesome tools at hand these days is probably a futile full time job. At the end of the day the best I can do is to be reasonably sure that I haven't overlooked any obvious things I could infringe. The problem is that the patent system is used mostly as a place where large corporations can attack one another. |
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