Defensive Patent Strategies

Patents for Defending Your Company

Many entrepreneurs and business owners want patents that will defend their company against competitors, but few companies actually have a proactive plan for investing their patent assets wisely. BlueIron IP is one way for you to get the benefit of a professionally managed patent portfolio at an affordable cost.

To defend your company, you want patents that are (1) litigation worthy and (2) relate directly to your company’s products and services.

Litigation worthy patents are not the garden variety patents that you get from your local patent attorney. The primary goal of the litigation worthy patent is to get a good examination. This means presenting the invention clearly and succinctly so that the examiner grasps the invention and can do a good search. The second goal is to avoid all of the many pitfalls that can sink a patent in litigation, such as avoiding patent profanity, providing too little (or too narrow) support for variations, and many others.

Patent Drafting Styles Change to Meet the Client’s Needs – Building a Portfolio

This post is a third of a series of posts describing patent drafting styles. See the others here and here.

When building a patent portfolio with the intent to sell a company, the main audience is not potential infringers, but the acquiring company. Depending on the situation, the acquiring company may have any of several different reasons for the acquisition.

Patent Drafting Styles Change to Meet the Client’s Needs – Protecting a Specific Product

I vary the drafting style of a patent application based on the client’s business needs. Based on the client’s short and long term needs of the patent, the resulting patent may take on significantly different looks.

Violating Someone Else’s Patent

In response to my previous post about goofing around with MythTV, a comment was left asking if I was concerned about violating someone else’s patent by building a MythTV box. In fact, I am not concerned about violating anyone’s patent, and here is why.

Debunking the Myth that Patents Are Expensive

When a company considers protecting a product, be it a software program, mechanical device, or other product, the strategy must make good business sense. It is certainly possible to spend vast sums of money on large downtown patent firms and file many international patents, then spend virtually endless amounts of money litigating with infringers, but there are other alternatives.