Glos­sary & Links

We’re all fa­mil­iar with them — but we use them with the ut­most care. Af­ter all, we don’t want a Google search or an AI prompt to sud­den­ly be­come pri­or art. They are a use­ful tool for patent and pri­or art search­es. We of­ten use a closed data­base and our in­ter­nal data, some of which dates back over 30 years.

In patent law, an amend­ment (change or cor­rec­tion) refers to the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the patent ap­pli­ca­tion or the patent claims. It serves to re­spond to ob­jec­tions raised by ex­am­in­ers, to bet­ter dis­tin­guish the in­ven­tion from the pri­or art, or to clar­i­fy the scope of protection:

1. Re­sponse to ex­am­i­na­tion no­tices: In most cas­es, an amend­ment is a re­sponse to an ini­tial ex­am­i­na­tion no­tice (of­fice ac­tion) in which the patent of­fice points out de­fi­cien­cies or con­flict­ing pri­or art.
2. The sub­ject mat­ter of the patent ap­pli­ca­tion may not be sub­se­quent­ly ex­pand­ed by an amendment.
3. Af­ter the patent is grant­ed, the scope of pro­tec­tion of the claims may no longer be ex­pand­ed, but only narrowed.

A cease-and-de­sist let­ter is a for­mal, ex­tra­ju­di­cial de­mand ad­dressed to an al­leged patent in­fringer re­quir­ing the im­me­di­ate ces­sa­tion of the unau­tho­rized use of a patent­ed in­ven­tion. Its pur­pose is to avoid cost­ly lit­i­ga­tion and typ­i­cal­ly re­quests the sub­mis­sion of a legal­ly bind­ing cease-and-de­sist de­c­la­ra­tion, of­ten in­clud­ing con­trac­tu­al penal­ties for fu­ture violations.

The fol­low­ing claims may be asserted:

1. In­junc­tive Re­lief:
   A de­mand that the in­fring­ing ac­tiv­i­ty be dis­con­tin­ued in the fu­ture, of­ten re­in­forced by a cease-and-de­sist de­c­la­ra­tion sub­ject to con­trac­tu­al penalties.
2. Right to In­for­ma­tion:
   An oblig­a­tion to dis­close the ex­tent and du­ra­tion of the patent in­fringe­ment, in­clud­ing in­for­ma­tion such as quan­ti­ties sold, rev­enues gen­er­at­ed, and sup­pli­er details.
3. Claim for Dam­ages:
   A de­mand for fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion, which may be cal­cu­lat­ed based on lost prof­its, a hy­po­thet­i­cal roy­al­ty fee, or the prof­its earned by the infringer.

A cease-and-de­sist let­ter is of­ten ac­com­pa­nied by ev­i­dence of use (EoU) pre­pared by a patent engineer.

A patent claim de­fines the ex­act scope of pro­tec­tion for an in­ven­tion. It spec­i­fies, in legal­ly pre­cise terms, ex­act­ly what is pro­tect­ed and what third par­ties are pro­hib­it­ed from man­u­fac­tur­ing, us­ing, or sell­ing with­out permission.

A claim is usu­al­ly an ex­treme­ly long sin­gle sen­tence, of­ten con­sist­ing of a pre­am­ble (the known pri­or art) and a defin­ing por­tion (the ac­tu­al in­ven­tive feature).

There are in­de­pen­dent claims and de­pen­dent claims, which should be read as an ex­ten­sion of the in­de­pen­dent claims.

An in­ven­tion dis­clo­sure is a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment, typ­i­cal­ly pre­pared by a patent en­gi­neer in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the in­ven­tor. It com­pre­hen­sive­ly de­scribes and, where nec­es­sary, fur­ther de­vel­ops all as­pects of an in­ven­tion so that a patent at­tor­ney can di­rect­ly pre­pare and file a patent application.

An EoU (Evi­dence of Use) is a de­tailed analy­sis and doc­u­men­ta­tion that demon­strates how an ac­tu­al prod­uct, ser­vice, or tech­no­log­i­cal process in­fringes upon or uti­lizes the fea­tures of an ex­ist­ing patent claim.

The re­port is usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed in the form of a so-called EoU chart (also known as a claim chart).

All tech­ni­cal fea­tures of a pro­tect­ed patent (e.g., “com­po­nent X with func­tion Y”) are di­rect­ly com­pared with the fea­tures of an ac­tu­al com­pet­ing product.

An EoU chart is also used as ev­i­dence in court dur­ing litigation.

Eu­ro­pean Patent Of­fice. It con­ducts a cen­tral­ized grant pro­ce­dure, which re­sults in a bun­dle of na­tion­al Eu­ro­pean patents.

An FTO analy­sis (short for “Freedom to Oper­ate”) is a le­gal and tech­ni­cal re­view. It en­sures that a com­pa­ny can man­u­fac­ture and mar­ket a new prod­uct or process with­out in­fring­ing on third-par­ty patents or oth­er in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights.

Lit­i­ga­tion (the term for le­gal dis­putes or le­gal pro­ceed­ings) in patent law en­com­pass­es all le­gal dis­putes be­fore courts or ar­bi­tra­tion tri­bunals that re­volve around the en­force­ment, de­fense, or in­val­i­da­tion of patents. These include:

1. In­fringe­ment proceedings
2. Nul­li­ty and op­po­si­tion pro­ceed­ings (va­lid­i­ty)

A patent pro­tects your tech­ni­cal in­ven­tion. It al­lows you to pro­hib­it com­peti­tors from com­mer­cial­ly ex­ploit­ing your in­ven­tion for up to 20 years. In coun­tries where the patent is valid, you de­ter­mine who may man­u­fac­ture, sell, or im­port your in­ven­tion. You may also com­mer­cial­ize your patent by sell­ing it or li­cens­ing oth­ers to use the invention.

A patent at­tor­ney ad­vis­es and rep­re­sents clients in mat­ters re­lat­ing to the pro­tec­tion of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, such as in­ven­tions, trade­marks, and de­signs. They as­sess whether an in­ven­tion is patentable, trans­late tech­ni­cal in­no­va­tions into legal­ly pre­cise patent spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and rep­re­sent clients be­fore patent of­fices and oth­er au­thor­i­ties. Patent at­tor­neys of­ten work to­geth­er with patent en­gi­neers, who pro­vide the re­quired tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise in the form of re­ports, dis­clo­sures, patent stud­ies, or Ev­i­dence of Use (EoU) analyses.

A patent en­gi­neer serves as the cen­tral link be­tween tech­nol­o­gy and law. He an­a­lyzes new in­ven­tions, as­sess­es their patentabil­i­ty, and works close­ly with in­ven­tors and patent at­tor­neys. He also mon­i­tors the mar­ket and the com­pe­ti­tion. His in-depth en­gi­neer­ing knowl­edge en­ables him to fi­nal­ize “half-fin­ished in­ven­tions” or make them patentable in the first place.

They con­duct FTO (Free­dom-to-Op­er­ate) analy­ses and eval­u­ate po­ten­tial workarounds (de­sign-around).

In cas­es in­volv­ing li­cens­ing claims, lit­i­ga­tion, or patent amend­ments, they con­duct the nec­es­sary clar­i­fi­ca­tions and in­ves­ti­ga­tions. In do­ing so, they pre­pare patent stud­ies, an EoU (Ev­i­dence of Use), or an in­fringe­ment re­port. They also an­a­lyze ac­tu­al devices.

A le­gal agree­ment in which the patent hold­er (li­cen­sor) grants an­oth­er par­ty (li­censee) per­mis­sion to use, man­u­fac­ture, or sell the pro­tect­ed in­ven­tion. In re­turn, the li­censee pays fi­nan­cial fees known as roy­al­ties. There are var­i­ous types of li­cens­es, which dif­fer in scope and the rights granted:

• Ex­clu­sive license
• Non-ex­clu­sive license
• Cross-li­cens­ing: Two or more par­ties mu­tu­al­ly ex­change the rights to use their re­spec­tive patents.
• Com­pul­so­ry li­cense (rare, or­dered by a court or government)

A struc­tured search of ex­ist­ing patents and pub­li­ca­tions to as­sess the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of one’s own patent ap­pli­ca­tion or to avoid patent infringement.

A patent study (of­ten re­ferred to in Eng­lish as a “patent land­scape re­port”) is a sys­tem­at­ic analy­sis of patent doc­u­ments and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise. It is used to eval­u­ate in­no­va­tions, iden­ti­fy tech­nol­o­gy trends, and min­i­mize le­gal risks in a spe­cif­ic mar­ket. As part of this process, claim con­tent is an­a­lyzed for vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, in­ac­cu­ra­cy, and rea­son­able in­ter­pre­ta­tion, and is some­times com­pared with ex­ist­ing prod­ucts or pri­or art.

It can also be ex­pand­ed to in­clude the fol­low­ing areas:

1. Free­dom-to-Op­er­ate (FTO)
2. Patent Map­ping & Tech­nol­o­gy Trends: Vi­su­al and sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses of glob­al patent data.
3. Com­pet­i­tive Analy­sis: De­tailed mon­i­tor­ing of the patent ac­tiv­i­ties of di­rect competitors.
4. Due Dili­gence: Eval­u­a­tion of a company’s patent port­fo­lio that is to be ac­quired, sold, or merged to de­ter­mine its ac­tu­al val­ue and po­ten­tial risks.

Va­lid­i­ty Study (Le­gal Va­lid­i­ty Analy­sis): A tar­get­ed search for pri­or art to chal­lenge or in­val­i­date an op­pos­ing patent in the event of a dispute.

Com­pa­nies use EoUs and patent stud­ies to as­sess the ac­tu­al mar­ket val­ue of their own patent port­fo­lios and to pre­pare for po­ten­tial ne­go­ti­a­tions. These val­u­a­tions are usu­al­ly sup­port­ed by rel­e­vant patent stud­ies or EoUs.

Pri­or art refers to all knowl­edge and tech­nol­o­gy that was pub­licly avail­able any­where in the world pri­or to the fil­ing date of a patent ap­pli­ca­tion. This includes:

• Pub­lished patents and patent applications
• Sci­en­tif­ic publications
• Tech­ni­cal books
• White pa­pers and studies
• Pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tions and lec­tures, con­fer­ence pa­pers, or trade shows
• Pub­licly avail­able prod­ucts and services
• On­line content

Legal­ly, a trade­mark is a pro­tect­ed sym­bol that dis­tin­guish­es a company’s prod­ucts or ser­vices from those of oth­er com­pa­nies. In prin­ci­ple, any graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a sym­bol can be a trade­mark un­der the law, such as words, com­bi­na­tions of let­ters, num­bers, graph­ic im­ages, three-di­men­sion­al shapes, slo­gans, com­bi­na­tions of these el­e­ments, or even sound marks con­sist­ing of a se­quence of sounds.

World In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Ad­min­is­ters in­ter­na­tion­al patent ap­pli­ca­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly un­der the Patent Co­op­er­a­tion Treaty (PCT), which al­lows ap­pli­cants to seek pro­tec­tion in over 150 coun­tries with a sin­gle in­ter­na­tion­al application.