Patent protection outside the USA

Hello All,

I know we have some experienced business people and legal experts
among us, and I am hoping to get some input on the current situation
concerning US Patents.

I have a device for which I hold a US Patent, but I never attempted
to get it patented internationally, and I’m wondering if most
countries honor US patents, or must I register or apply for patents
in other locations.

If so, must everything be translated to the appropriate language?
With everything exposed to a global marketplace these days, I’m sure
there are changing laws, and, I suspect, probably diminishing
protection. Hope I’m wrong about that.

Any would be greatly appreciated.

Tess

Your US Patent is only going to protect you from the item selling in
the US, if you’re lucky. You need foreign filings done - it’s
extremely expensive. A separate filing for every country you want to
claim rights in and usually different regulations in all of them. I
ran the foreign patent/trademark filing department for the last law
firm I worked at. I’m not a lawyer and can’t give advice - but I do
know there is a deadline for filing if you want to claim the same
date that your US Patent was filed - it’s called Paris Convention
rights. If you are thinking of doing this, I may be able to refer
you to some good lawyers with foreign filing experience.

Some countries uphold American Patents, like England and Canada,
while some countries in the Pacific rim do not recognize your
patent. Most of the time it is a country by country situation. A
friend of mine brings back CDs and DVDs from Singapore, which he
pays a lot less for them because they are bootlegs and the copyright
is not recognized.

Jerry

    I have a device for which I hold a US Patent, but I never
attempted to  get it patented internationally, and I'm wondering if
most countries honor  US patents, or must I register or apply for
patents in other locations. 

Catching up on 639 Orchid posts…

Your US patent doesn’t give you any protection in any other country,
not even Canada or England. And, since your US patent has already
issued you are not even entitled to a patent in any other
country—if you were to apply for one your own patent would preclude
you from getting a valid patent in that country.

And just a side note (re a different thread), there are three main
kinds of intellectual property protection, copyright, trademark, and
patent. They are all three very different from each other and it is
wrong to use one term when another is in fact the case. It is also
wrong to cavalierly brush off someone’s rights with the sad excuse
(not) that “the public” will take those rights anyway. The reality is
they won’t, loss of trademark rights is always due to laxity on the
part of the owner.

James E. White
Inventor, Marketer, and Author of “Will It Sell? How to Determine If
Your Invention Is Profitably Marketable (Before Wasting Money on a
Patent)” Info Sites: www.willitsell.com www.inventorhome.com,
www.idearights.com www.taletyano.com www.booksforinventors.com