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What is Patent Infringement?

Understanding patent infringement—direct and indirect infringement, defenses, and how AI helps assess risk.

Definition

Patent infringement occurs when someone makes, uses, sells, or imports a product or process that falls within the scope of a valid patent's claims without permission from the patent owner.

Types of Infringement

  • Direct infringement: Performing all elements of a patent claim
  • Indirect infringement: Inducing or contributing to someone else's direct infringement
  • Literal infringement: Accused product exactly matches every claim element
  • Doctrine of equivalents: Accused product performs substantially the same function in substantially the same way
  • Willful infringement: Knowing about the patent and infringing anyway (can result in enhanced damages)

Common Defenses

  • Non-infringement: The accused product doesn't meet all claim elements
  • Invalidity: The patent should not have been granted (prior art exists)
  • Exhaustion: Patent rights were exhausted by an authorized sale
  • License: The accused party has a license
  • Laches/estoppel: The patent owner waited too long to assert

How Analytics Helps

AI patent analytics helps with infringement analysis by:

  1. Identifying patents that may be relevant to your products
  2. Analyzing claim scope and potential overlap
  3. Finding prior art for invalidity defenses
  4. Monitoring assertion activity and litigation trends
FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

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What are the penalties for patent infringement?

Remedies include injunctions (stopping the infringing activity), compensatory damages (lost profits or reasonable royalties), and in cases of willful infringement, up to 3x enhanced damages plus attorney fees.

Can you infringe a patent you didn't know about?

Yes. Patent infringement is a strict liability offense—you can infringe even without knowledge of the patent. However, damages may differ based on knowledge.

What is a design-around?

A design-around is an alternative product design that achieves the same function while avoiding the specific claim elements of an asserted patent.

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