IP Intelligence
Patent Criticalities
The things that quietly decide whether an invention can be protected - explained before they cost you anything.
Showing 15 of 56.
The prior art nobody checked
Prior art is anything already available to the public, anywhere in the world, in any language, in any form. A team can be genuinely original and still be second - an…
New is the easy part. Inventive is the hard part.
Novelty is a single-document test and it is largely mechanical. Inventive step is a judgement about whether a competent, unimaginative person in your field would hav…
Why a good invention still gets a Section 3 objection
A section 3 objection is a subject-matter objection, and it is answered by evidence and framing rather than by arguing about the prior art. Each clause has its own t…
Software claimed as software
You cannot patent a computer programme per se. You can, on current Indian authority, patent an invention that happens to be implemented in software if it delivers a …
Your claim is broader than your invention
Breadth is not free. Every extra millimetre of claim scope pulls in more prior art and demands more disclosure to support it. A claim that reaches beyond what you ac…
Adding words does not make a claim stronger
It feels safer to describe the invention thoroughly in the claim. It is the opposite of safer. Every additional word is an additional condition that a competitor has…
There is nowhere to retreat to
Claim 1 will often not survive examination. What decides whether you still have a patent worth having is whether the drafter built a ladder of narrower, meaningful p…
You only described the one you built
A specification that describes exactly one implementation gives you exactly one implementation to fall back on. Alternatives you considered and rejected are some of …
The description is thinner than the claim needs
A patent is a trade: a monopoly for a teaching. If the teaching would not let a competent person in your field reproduce the invention across the width of the claim,…
The wrong people are named as inventors
Inventorship is not authorship, seniority or reward. It is a factual question about who devised the invention **as claimed** - and because claims change during prose…
The case turns on what one word means
Before anyone asks whether a product infringes, the court decides what the claim means. That single decision then governs both infringement and validity - which is w…
Why enablement and support are different objections
Support asks whether the claim is fairly based on what you described. Enablement asks whether a skilled person could actually perform it across the claim's width. Th…
What you can and cannot change after filing
After filing, you can narrow, correct and explain. You cannot add. Every amendment has to be supported by what was disclosed in the specification as filed - which is…
The data you did not generate
In chemistry, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and food technology, several of the objections you will face can only be answered with comparative data. If nobody gener…
The invention changed after you filed
A patent application protects what it described on the day it was filed. Engineering does not stop on that day - and the version you eventually sell is often meaning…
This is the Ragulika IP Educational Criticality - our own editorial prioritisation device, to help you decide what to read first. It is not a legal score, it is not calculated from your facts, and it says nothing about the strength of any particular application.
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Educational guidance, not legal advice. This material is published by Ragulika IP for general education and information. It is not legal advice, it does not create a professional-client relationship, and it is not a substitute for advice on your own facts. Patentability, infringement, prosecution strategy and every other IP outcome turn on the specific facts and on the law and Patent Office practice as they stand at the time you act. Please take professional advice before making a decision, and read the underlying provision or judgment before relying on any point stated here.