What to do if someone sued for patent infringement
After the patent is sued for infringement by others, it will be found that many parties do not pay enough attention when they receive the subpoena from the court or the notice from the local patent administrative law enforcement department, or even if they do, they do not know what to do, and always deal with disputes in their own way.
So, what work should be prepared after being sued or complained by others?
1. After receiving the evidence materials transmitted by the court or the local patent administrative law enforcement department, the evidence materials shall be analyzed as soon as possible, and the products involved in the case shall be compared with the claims of the patent involved. Determine whether the product involved falls within the scope of protection of the claims of the patent involved. If it does not fall into the category, it can conduct non infringement defense.
2. If you are a seller, you can collect evidence from legitimate sources. For example, purchase contracts, invoices, WeChat chat records, transfer records, etc. can prove the existence of transactions. If a complete chain of evidence can be formed, the defense can be conducted through legal sources. Once the defense is established, the defendant may not be liable for compensation for the infringement, but it also needs to bear the legal responsibility to stop the infringement.
3. The invalid search shall be carried out for the patent involved, and the existing technical documents that are the same or equivalent to the product involved shall be searched at the same time. If a patent document conforming to the prior art is retrieved, the prior art or prior design can be contested.
If the patent documents that cannot constitute the prior art or the prior design are retrieved, but there is evidence that may affect the creativity of the patent involved, the patent involved may be invalid to the Patent Reexamination Board. At the same time, within the defense period specified by the court or the local patent administrative law enforcement department, he/she should provide the request for suspension of hearing and submit the evidence materials for the declaration of patent invalidity, request the court to suspend the hearing and wait for the result of the declaration of patent invalidity (of course, whether to suspend the hearing requires the court to decide). Once the patent is invalid and successful, the defendant will not be responsible for stopping the infringement and compensation if it is not enough for infringement.
Among them, if in a patent infringement case, the defendant needs to defend through the third way of patent invalidation declaration, it must be completed within the defense period, and then it is possible to request the court to suspend the trial to extend the court's trial period (of course, depending on the circumstances of the case, there are many ways to extend the trial period). Otherwise, if a patent invalidation declaration is filed outside the defense period, the court will not suspend the hearing, which will cause the court's hearing period to exceed the hearing period of the patent invalidation declaration, which may cause the defendant to go through the second instance procedure and increase the cost of responding to the lawsuit, even after the plaintiff has obtained the application judgment and enforced it, the patent invalidation declaration has not been concluded, This is very unfavorable for the defendant.
Therefore, as long as the defendant successfully defends using one or more of the above defenses, at least it will not be liable for compensation. It can be seen that reasonable use of various deadlines and defense reasons is very important for the later trend of the case.
To sum up, after being sued for patent infringement by others, while paying attention to each time limit, it is also necessary to conduct patent infringement comparison, and collect evidence and patent literature, even journal literature, use of public evidence, online evidence, etc.
