What makes a patent scary?
When I say "scary patent", I mean a patent when asserted against a company, their legal counsel looks at it and says "Uh oh! We are going to have to pay damages..."
I looked into this concept a little bit, and while I'm not an attorney, I can certainly look at some facts about a patent being asserted and come to a conclusion myself on whether the patent looks scary and wouldn't want the patent owner to come knock on my door.
I found a patent that seemed scary to me, US7802310B2.
In a quick check, I found this patent has been part of a bunch of patent infringement cases, has a good number of forward citations, multiple license transactions, been reassigned (read, "used as collateral or sold to another company") several times and challenged at the PTAB a few times and survived.
Intuition tells me this patent has all kinds of elements that imply not only strength but long term value.
I'm interested in what kind of factors would make you think a patent would make you nervous about it's power in an assertion campaign?
Director, at Teva Pharmaceuticals
6 年Any patent being asserted against you is annoying because, regardless of the merits, you have to spend money defending against it. Scary is when it is a strong patent, with a clean file history, that reads on your commercial activity, and when you didnt know about it.??
And see my article “Can You Patent a Bong Made Out of an Apple?” On my profile.
This is what I do in the life sciences, including cannabis. Would be happy to look at this. Send me a private message please.
Patent | Trademark | Copyright | Trade Secret | Entertainment Law | Lightning in a Bottle? Legal Services
6 年If it was granted on a technology that is 80 years old, like standard steam methane reforming, for instance.
Product Manager, Data at Whatnot
6 年Great question! When I see patents change hands or, more specifically, licensed-out to an "unlikely" market player I take note