IP Intelligence
Patent Criticalities
The things that quietly decide whether an invention can be protected - explained before they cost you anything.
Showing 23 of 56.
You told the world before you told the Patent Office
In India there is no general grace period. If your invention was made available to the public before your priority date, that disclosure is prior art against your ow…
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…
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 …
A granted patent does not mean you are free to sell
A patent is a right to stop other people. It is not a licence to practise your own invention. Your product can be simultaneously protected by your patent and blocked…
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…
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 …
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…
Nobody decided what the priority date was for
Priority is not a property of your application. It attaches, claim by claim, to whatever was fairly disclosed in the filing you are relying on. Treating it as a sing…
Filing abroad first, without permission
A person resident in India may not apply outside India for a patent without written permission from the Controller, unless an application for the same invention was …
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…
Most applications do not fail. They stop.
Very few Indian applications are refused after an argument. Most simply end because a date passed - and because there is no decision to appeal, there is often nothin…
The patent died of neglect
Renewal fees are due from the expiration of the second year from the date of the patent, and each year after. Miss them and the patent ceases to have effect - usuall…
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…
A granted patent can still be taken away
Grant is a decision by an examining office on the material in front of it. Section 13(4) says expressly that it carries no warranty of validity - and there are four …
Somebody is reading your published application
Publication makes your application visible to everyone who competes with you. In some industries, opposition is a routine part of the landscape rather than an except…
Nobody enforces your patent for you
Granting a patent and enforcing it are done by completely different institutions. The Patent Office has no role once a patent is granted - enforcement is a civil act…
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 …
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.