Patent It Yourself - PDF Archive

416 | Patent it YOURSELF
3. If your U.S. patent covers a process, imports a product
made abroad by your patented process.
4. Induces infringement of your patent.
5. Offers to sell, sells, or imports a material component
of your patented machine or process made especially
for use in infringement of your patent and not a
staple article of commerce with substantial noninfringing
use.
6. Supplies in or from the U.S. a substantial portion
of the components of your patented machine for
assembly outside of the U.S.
You can use your ownership of the patent to obtain value
in any of seven ways:
1. Sell the patent outright.
2. License others to make, use, and/or sell the patented
invention in return for royalties under a variety of
conditions, subject to the antitrust laws mentioned
in the note below. (See Chapter 16 for a more detailed
discussion about the sale and licensing of patent
rights.)
3. Create a monopoly by preventing anyone else from
making, using, or selling the invention. In this case
you would manufacture the invention yourself (or
have it manufactured for you) and charge more than
you’d have to in a competitive situation. Xerox did
this in the early days of photocopiers and Polaroid
and Sony do it now with their instant film, cameras,
and the one-gun Trinitron CRT. In other words, a
patent will give you the right (within limits) to fix the
price of your product—a capitalist’s dream!
4. If accused of patent infringement, you may be able
to assert your patent against the other patent holder
and generate a cross-licensing arrangement to avoid
paying royalties or having to stop infringing.
5. You can tout your patent in advertising.
6. The patent is a publication (as of its filing date) that
will prevent others from patenting the same thing.
7. While a patent does not give you any immunity from
infringing others’ patents, if you are manufacturing
anything and another patent holder charges you with
infringement, you can sometimes use the patent to
(a) show that your products are separately patentable
and thus are not direct copies, and (b) prevent the
infringer from using the doctrine of equivalents.
licensing, compulsory price fixing, and other practices that
impose undue restraints on free trade all violate the antitrust
laws. This is very rarely a problem for the independent inventor
but can occasionally raise problems for large corporations. For
a discussion of antitrust law as it affects the use of patents, go
to any law library and look for any books on patent-antitrust
law. One text is Antitrust Law Handbook 1999, by William C.
Holmes (West 1999). Also look under the heading “Patents,”
subhead, “antitrust,” in any legal encyclopedia, such as Corpus
Juris Secundum.
Extending the Effectiveness of Your Patent
If you want to continue to make money from your
creativity after your patent expires, you should plow back
some of your royalties or proceeds from the sale of the
patent for research. In this way you can invent further
developments and improvements, and thereby get more
and later patents so as effectively to extend your monopoly
beyond its relatively short term. You can even file a new
patent application on the improvements when you invent
them, but withhold the introduction of products with the
improvements until you’ve milked the market with the basic
products. DuPont did this with its Teflon and Teflon II.
2. Property Rights
The law considers a patent to be personal property that its
owner can sell, give away, or otherwise dispose of. It can
even be seized by your judgment creditors, just like your
car, a share of stock, or any other item of personal property.
Although it’s personal property, the actual patent deed
you receive from the PTO has no inherent value; thus you
need not put it in your safe-deposit box or take any steps
to preserve it against loss. Your ownership of the patent is
recorded in the PTO (just like the deed to your house is
recorded by your county’s Recorder of Deeds). If you lose
the original deed, you can download copies, or the PTO
will sell you copies of the printed patent (certified if you
desire) and/or certified copies of a title report showing that
you’re the owner.
Tip
Antitrust Note. Occasionally, companies or
individuals who own a patent or manufacture a patented
invention use their patent to extend their monopoly in ways that
violate the antitrust laws. For example, compulsory package
3. Medical Procedure Exemption
A few years ago, one physician sued another for infringement
of a patented ophthalmic surgery technique.
This upset the medical establishment, which used its