Posted by David - OR on March 31, 2009 at 15:19:53 from (208.67.204.213):
In Reply to: Re: Patents..... posted by Janicholson on March 31, 2009 at 13:34:22:
A patent does not protect your invention. Quite the contrary, you must disclose to the public exactly how the invention works, and how to make it. The invention becomes public knowledge. You've given up your trade secrets in attempting to secure patent protection.
What an issued patent ultimately gives you is a set of exclusive rights to make, use, or sell the patented object, wherein these rights are set forth as a set of very specific and limited patent claims.
To gain in this process, and not lose, you must do a very good job of writing the claims, and think through all the different ways somebody else could evade the claims by making slight changes to the design, and thus try to make the claims broad enough to cover not only your exact embodiment of the invention, but many other ways of doing the same thing. This is a highly specialized task beyond the knowledge or skills of most inventors.
Most importantly, you must be ready and willing to enforce the claims. You must be prepared to file suit in Federal District Court, or at the Federal Trade Commission. You must assemble sufficient evidence of infringement prior to filing suit, lest you may ultimately be held liable for the defendant's attorney fees.
Finally, you must prevail in any ultimate litigation to collect damages. Litigation costs can easily exceed $10 million before you see a dime in damages, royalties, or settlement.
The individual inventor will tend to find it difficult to initiate and prevail at litigation. That is why patents, in effect, largely protect big corporations and not "the little guy".
Ironically, patent litigation attorneys, often working on a contingency basis, and "patent troll" specialty firms CAN easily profit from a patent. This despite the fact that they don't employ the invention at all, and act as mere holders of purported "intellectual property".
To sum up, corporations can win at the patent game, and attorneys can win, and patent troll firms can win, but it's a very tough game for individuals.
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