Let’s start with what a patent does. A patent gives the patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale and importing the invention for about 20 years from the patent application filing date. If someone does make, use, sell, offer for sale or import a product or process that is covered by an issued patent, then the individual has committed patent infringement.

Now, there are two primary patent strategies our attorneys frequently discuss.

The first is what our patent attorneys call an “offensive patent strategy.” An ‘offensive patent strategy’ seeks to protect the actual invention that the business is going to practice. So if an inventor develops a better mouse trap, the inventor may want to prevent others from making or selling the same mousetrap.

The second is what our patent attorneys call a “defensive patent strategy.” A ‘defensive patent strategy’ seeks to prevent others from practicing inventions that may compete with the invention that the patentee is going to practice himself. It may be similar or different. Let’s go back to the mousetrap example. . . The patent owner of the better mousetrap may think of a second mousetrap that may work as effectively or even better but for reasons such as manufacturing costs, etc., the patent owner prefers to stay with the original patented product. But the inventor doesn’t want someone else to practice the second mousetrap. By obtaining a patent on the second mousetrap the inventor prevents someone else from practicing the second mousetrap.