Background on intervening rights Since the 1940’s, the courts recognized the inherent unfairness of changing the claim scope of an issued patent through post issuance procedures and then suing another who had relied on the issued claims in the original patent in preparing to compete.  For example, if a patent was directed to an automobile [...]

Choice between patents or trade secrets Inventions may be protected either through trade secret or patent.  Inventions that are accessible to the public and can be reversed engineered cannot be protected through trade secrets.  Trade secret protection requires that the information remain a secret.  In these cases, the invention must be protected through patents.  However, [...]

After receiving a patent, a significant number of patentees license their invention to others.  Sometimes, patentees attempt to extract more and more out of the licensee.  However, when the patentee attempts to expand the scope of the patent too far then the licensee can assert the defense of patent misuse which can render the license [...]