Intellectual Property Directions

An advertisement in a muscle magazine for a dietary supplement was all it took to invalidate Iovate’s licensed patent. Iovate is the licensee of U.S. Patent 6,100,287, which claims the use of nutritional supplements containing a ketoacid and an amino acid to enhance muscle performance or recovery from fatigue. When they sued a competitor, BSN, Inc., for infringement for selling a competing supplement the courts found that an ad for Weider’s VICTORY^TM Professional Protein published in Flex magazine was an anticipating printed publication of the invention. That is, the ad disclosed every limitation of the claimed invention.

 I often tell clients that the value of a patent is only determined if someone cares enough to want to infringe it. And if someone does find it worthwhile to infringe, you can be sure they will invest in finding any invalidating prior art they can. That’s too late for you to find out your patent should never have been allowed; you should have done research up-front, before investing in a patent application. Like the old oil change ad said, “you can pay me now, or you can pay me later”.

Most people understand the importance of doing a patent search before investing heavily in the development of a new product. Some people understand the value of doing a patent search before investing in the patent application process. But too few people understand that reviewing the NON-PATENT prior art before investing in that patent application is also an important up-front investment to make before plunging into the patenting process.

In fact, in many situations it may be more important to look at the non-patent prior art. The patent examiner, bless his or her heart, will at least do some sort of search in the US Patent database. If you’ve filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, you’ll get a search of various international patents. But you’re pretty much on your own when it comes to bringing forth the non-patent prior art. And that makes sense - after all, you are the expert in the field of your invention, aren’t you?

Clients’ first reaction to this advice is almost uniformly: “But then I might not get my patent!” True, true. But if you do get a patent and, like Iovate, a competitor infringes, don’t you think he will find that prior art and turn your patent into an expensive piece of wallpaper?

How confident are you that your patents will stand up to a court challenge?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Prior publication, anticipation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.