Before you even apply for a patent, you might want to know what kind of rights you would have as a patent owner. A patent does not give an owner unlimited rights because he/she has received a patent. The patent owner rights are listed below.
If you register your patent, you have the right to exclude others from using your invention without your permission. You have the right to decide who may or may not use your patent invention for the period in which it is protected. The patent cannot be commercially made, distributed, used or sold by others without the owner’s consent. If you do decide to give someone permission to use your patent, you could do so under agreed terms. One way you could go about doing this is to license your product to someone else.
If you have a granted patent, you have the right to file a case of infringement if your patent is exploited or stolen. This must be done within six years from the date of infringement. If you don’t have a granted patent, pre-grant protection is available. This allows you to obtain reasonable damages for certain infringing activities that occurred before the patent’s date of issuance. In order to obtain damages, you would have to show that the infringing activities occurred after the publication of the patent application, that the patented claims are substantially identical to the claims in the published application, and that the infringer had actual notice of the published patent application.
If your invention is patented, the brand recognition could surge and might empower the business to charge the customer. This would help the value of your business expand in many ways.
The patent is a great asset and has the potential to gain monetary benefits than any other intellectual property if managed in the correct way. You could license, assign or sell your patent, if needed. Many pharmaceutical companies have made great profit by doing this. If you decide to sell your patent, you could get money right away and you would be able to recover the cost of development and would not need any money to market the product yourself.
If is very important to work with an attorney so that they could help you better understand your rights as a patent owner and answer any questions you have.