New At Synoptic IP Blog

Patents play a crucial role in protecting ones IP rights. A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. When a company or individual launches a product in a new market particularly in technology sectors where there is extensive patenting, there is a high risk that commercialization may be blocked by a competitor who holds a patent for a technology used in that product. If this scenario comes to fruition, then the infringing party might suffer huge financial losses, for example they could be asked to stop the launch or to compensate the patent holder. Freedom to operate is the capacity to operate in a given jurisdiction without infringing on another’s intellectual property rights.

The analyst conducting the novelty search will require a detailed disclosure of the invention. Additional information such as drawings and figures are also useful to get a clear understanding of the invention.

An inventor must provide answers to the following questions describe the invention:

The patentable subject matter defined in 35 U.S.C. 101 as any “process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. A patent can be granted if it discloses a new product or process, that has an inventive step, and do not seem obvious to a person having ordinary skills in the art (in particular technical field) and has industrial applicability or utility.

A Novelty search, sometime interchangeably used with patentability search, is a type of prior art search which includes patent and non-patent literature search conducted to determine whether the invention is novel, or not.  A patent can be obtained on an invention if it necessarily meets the following three conditions:

The process of drafting, filing and negotiating with a Patent office in order to obtain patent protection and rights for an invention is known as Patent prosecution. It involves reasoning for the patentability of your invention based on technical and legal grounds specified by USPTO under 35 US Code. This starts with filing an application at the patent office of a country where you wish to hold the protection for your invention.