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.
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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 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…
The invention exists but the record does not
A patent can only be as good as what the drafter was given. Where the technical record is a slide deck and a conversation, the specification ends up thin, the altern…
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 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…
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…
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.