Commercially focussed advice on protecting your company assets with patents & designs

About Patents

Information about patents
Patents are for protecting new, innovative and industrially applicable inventions. When time and money has been invested to overcome a technical problem to provide a new solution, it is likely that the solution is a patentable invention. A patent would help protect that research investment so that you can prevent competitors incorporating that solution into their products.

Confidentiality
Once an invention has been made, it must be kept confidential before a patent application is filed. If you need input from outside your business (e.g. a consultant or another company) before you can launch your new invention, we would recommend that you file a patent application to protect the invention even before signing a non-disclosure agreement. This is in order that it is clearly established at the outset of any such collaboration what intellectual property you are contributing.

Urgency
Frequently a number of companies may be working in the same technical field, trying to solve similar technical problems. Accordingly we would recommend that patent protection is sought urgently.

Searching
Before filing, we would recommend that a prior art search is done, for example to check that no one else has had the same idea but failed to commercialise it. We can arrange searches on your behalf or guide you in doing your own searches using online databases.

Protecting commercially vital features
For a patent to work for you as a business asset, it is important that only commercially vital elements of the invention are defined as being essential features of the patent. As it may take some time for the commercially important elements to be identified, we appreciate that a flexible, open approach to defining the invention will give more valuable protection in the long run.

Importance of patent awareness
Unlike design right or copyright, it is not necessary to prove copying to prove infringement of a patent. It should be noted though that a patent is a negative right in that it enables you to stop others doing that which is covered by the patent. Therefore it is worth maintaining a watch on the patenting activities of your competitors.

What we do
At J. P. Peel & Co Ltd, we can assist you by preparing patent applications for you by arranging prior art searches, drafting patent specifications, prosecuting patent applications to grant, maintaining granted patents, advising on infringement of patents and approaching competitors on your behalf when there is likelihood of them infringing your rights. We can also assist you when you are in the receiving position of such allegations.

Technologies
We have experience of writing and prosecuting patent applications and advising on patent rights for inventions in a wide range of technologies. Please click here for more information about the technologies with which we have experience.
Please click here for information about our patent services.