When a client reviews prior art, documents such as patents, patent applications, journal articles, items and other documents that disclose an invention, she is quite often struck by how many of the patents are for extremely comparable inventions. How can every single of these patents have been granted when they share so a lot of standard elements? There appears to be so considerably overlap.
Overlap is in reality an fundamental portion of the patent method. To recognize how the overlap functions in practice, 1 need to realize the most basic principle of patent law - a patent gives the holder the ideal to cease other people from practicing her invention, but it does not give the holder the ideal to practice her own invention.
For example, suppose you invented a unicycle with the longitudinal stabilizer. The stabilizer made it considerably much easier to ride a unicycle, and you effectively patented invention. I buy 1 of your unicycles, and mainly because I'm less coordinated than you, find that I also need a latitudinal stabilizer. With both the longitudinal and latitudinal stabilizers, even I can ride a unicycle, and I patent that invention.
Even though I hold a patent on a unicycle with the longitudinal and latitudinal stabilizer, I can not develop my invention without infringing your patent because my invention includes a unicycle with a longitudinal stabilizer. But, I could avoid you from making a unicycle with each longitudinal and latitudinal stabilizers. If the industry of klutzes who want to ride a unicycle is significant sufficient, you could get a license from me, or I could get a license from you, or we could cross license, so that unicycles with both stabilizers could be built.
This feature of patent law makes it possible for inventors to shield incremental improvements to existing items. It benefits society by encouraging innovation even when the innovator may perhaps be precluded from practicing his innovation without a license from the patent holder of the core invention.
It also indicates that numerous patents are granted for inventions that are highly comparable. Each and every of those similar patents are incremental improvements to or variations of the core invention. The inventors of the improvements and variations that are adopted should really be and are rewarded for their creativity. If one does not want to pay them, he is free to generate a product with no their innovations.
By allowing applications for similar inventions to be granted, innovation is encouraged, but at the cost of a great deal more intellectual property to consider and evaluation when creating a item. The plethora of similar patents in the United States is top viewed as strong evidence that innovation is alive and well.
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