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…
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 …
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 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…
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…
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…
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 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 danger of filing too late
Late filings fail in three different ways, and only one of them is about competitors. Your own disclosure becomes prior art against you. Somebody else files first. A…
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…
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…
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.
Keep going.
Every explanation here links to the ones next to it. Follow the thread rather than the menu.
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.