Minneapolis Patent Law Blog

Just about anything seems to hold some potential for becoming weaponized these days. Cyber bullying uses social media to inflict shame and pain on others. Flaming arrows over Twitter have seen a resurgence of life lately, especially in politics. In the intellectual property world, many agree that the threat comes from patent trolls.

Unless you live under a rock (or perhaps a bridge), you know that patent trolls are individuals or entities who leverage patents in a legal way. As one recent study describes them, patent trolls obtain rights to patents from others who did the actual work. The attractive patents are those that offer an opportunity for asserting rights against alleged violators, usually in hopes of scoring financial settlements.

Everything these days seems to come with an expiration date, and patents are no exception. If you have a new invention or new way of producing a product, you have good reason to protect it against theft. You certainly want to secure it if you want to monetize your idea or invention. Alternatively, you might want to obtain a patent to be sure no one else exploits your idea or invention to your detriment.

Either way, a patent serves this kind of purpose, but for how long. So to ensure that you maintain the full measure of protection you desire from a patent, you need to know the answer.

Where does pursuit of intellectual property protection fall on the continuum of steps to bring an amazing idea to market? Most inventors and entrepreneurs ponder this question at some point. Everyone probably has his or her own answer.

As experienced patent law practitioners, our view is that many people take a "cart before the horse" approach to this subject. Their thinking tends to follow a logic that protecting the idea is something that should follow full product development, getting a business plan in place and finding funding to get production and marketing started. But if you wait on getting patent, copyright or trademark approval, you risk seeing your hopes and dreams sunk by someone who got to the IP protection line first.

A couple of significant cases of the past year and one that is expected to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in the next several months highlight how the patent law legal landscape is ever in transition. The nature of the patent law environment is so dynamic that answers to questions raised at one point in a case could be different later. This is why when patent issues arise, it's important to have skilled counsel working on your behalf.

One case of note we touched on in an earlier post. It involves a matter argued last fall before the high court regarding whether administrative court processes established by the Patent Office are legal or unconstitutional. Specifically, the question is whether patents are private property rights erasable only by a federal court judge, or whether so-called inter partes reviews by an administrative judge are sufficient.