IP Intelligence
Patent Criticalities
The things that quietly decide whether an invention can be protected - explained before they cost you anything.
Showing 19 of 56.
Nobody wrote down who owns it
An invention belongs to its inventors unless something in writing moves it. Filing in the company's name does not by itself transfer anything. Ownership defects are …
Claim 1 describes your product instead of your invention
Claim 1 is the patent. If it recites the specific product you happened to build - your materials, your dimensions, your architecture - then a competitor only has to …
Nobody asked the Patent Office to look at it
An Indian patent application is not examined unless someone files a request and pays for it. If the request is not filed in time, the application is treated as withd…
The reply that quietly gave the patent away
A first examination report is an opening position, not a rejection. The two ways applicants lose value here are missing the date, and buying a grant by conceding mor…
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…
The invention is new - and still not patentable
Indian law has a filter that operates completely independently of novelty and inventive step. Section 3 lists things that are not inventions at all - and something c…
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…
Searching once, at the wrong moment
Most organisations search once, just before filing, and treat the result as a verdict. Searching is more useful when it is treated as a repeated activity with a diff…
The provisional that covered nothing
A provisional specification buys a date for the subject matter it actually describes. A two-page document that states the idea without explaining how it works buys a…
The application is in the wrong name
The applicant is who will own the patent. Getting it wrong affects fee category, chain of title, who can sue, and what an investor sees in diligence - and correcting…
Filing before anyone asked whether it was worth it
Patentability and value are different questions, and organisations that only ask the first one accumulate portfolios that cost money every year and defend nothing.
The danger of filing too early
Filing early is usually right. Filing before there is anything to describe is not. A premature application starts clocks - twelve months to a complete specification,…
The twelve months that decide your international position
Twelve months from your first filing, you must either file in each country you care about, or file a PCT application that preserves the option. There is no third cho…
The working statement nobody filed
India requires patentees and licensees to tell the Patent Office whether a patent has been worked in India. The obligation moved from annual to once every three fina…
The patent that only covers what you already sell
There is a version of every application that will be granted: the one narrowed to precisely what you already sell. It is also the version competitors do not need to …
Turning up to the hearing with nothing new
A hearing is the last chance to change the outcome before a decision is written. The Controller has already read the file, so repeating the written arguments achieve…
The licence that could not be enforced
Most licence disputes are not about royalty rates. They are about who may do what, where, and what happens when something changes - and those are the clauses that ge…
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.