Patent Law UK
Ian Wood - Charles Russell LLP
Ian is a partner in the intellectual property department of the City-based lawyers, Charles Russell LLP.
Ian has been involved in many substantial patent disputes, several of which are regularly cited as authorities. Many of these disputes are multi-jurisdictional and most are for major multinational corporations – although with the advent of the Patents County Court (see below), he and Charles Russell are acting for an increasing number of SMEs. One of Ian’s relatively recent cases was successfully defending WaveCrest in a patent infringement claim brought against them by Aerotel, a corporation which had no apparent interest in exploiting the patent itself. This was the first case in which a UK patent was revoked because the underlying invention was simply a business method (and therefore excluded from patentability).
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is experience includes all aspects of intellectual property, including dispute resolution and advising on the acquisition, maintenance and exploitation of IP rights. He has also
advised the European Commission in connection with WTO disputes regarding international obligations on patents.
What do you need to get a patent?
If you come up with an invention, patent protection can be obtained for it if it meets certain criteria – amongst which are that the invention must be novel and must not be obvious in light of what was known to the public when the patent is applied for.
Provided you are able to successfully negotiate the requirements for obtaining a patent, which usually includes rigorous checks, the granted patent will give you a monopoly on whatever it is you claim you’ve invented (although you will have to ensure that the monopoly you claim – and which is set out in the ‘claims’ of the patent - does not extend beyond your actual invention).
Q Do you get a worldwide patent?
Patents are granted on a geographical basis; you can get a patent that covers the UK, one that covers the USA, one for Australia, and so on. Broadly the way the system works (and it is governed by a series of international conventions) is that you are able to make a patent application in just one country, and then you have a year to decide in which other countries you want to make applications. The date on which you make your first application is your ‘priority date’. Essentially, public disclosures by anyone after the priority date that would otherwise make your invention ‘not novel or obvious’ are ignored when considering whether you are entitled to a patent in the first country in which you apply – and (provided any further patent applications are made in other countries within the year following the priority date) are ignored in those other countries as well.
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What about the expense of patent protection?
There has been much talk about the expense
of patent protection – and people such as James Dyson have suggested that it should be made much cheaper. That is undoubtedly right – but not to the extent that it becomes easy to abuse the patent system and obtain the monopoly protection a patent gives in circumstances where it is not justified.
Q So where do you apply for patents?
Virtually no company will make patent applications covering every country in the world where they could get patent protection – and most will limit the eventual number of countries where they obtain such protection to those that meet their strategic needs. There are sensible reasons for this.
Not only would it be unfair for someone to apply for, and obtain, patent protection in every country if they only intended to exploit the invention covered by the patent in, say, two or three countries (as it would give them a monopoly in territories they are not going to do business in), but it would be expensive to do so. You can just imagine the clamour if there was worldwide patent protection – even
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