如何获得保护范围宽的高质量专利？

来源：大岭IP            作者：大岭先生

如何获得范围更宽和质量更优的专利

作者：Shikhar Sahni

翻译：大岭先生

长期以来，专利一直是企业发展战略的重要组成部分。例如，ARM和高通等公司已经围绕专利建立业务，这些专利构成了其收入的主要部分。当然，他们的专利质量在其中起着关键作用。

对专利质量的低估有其自身的风险。它不仅会影响专利许可费的直接收入，还会影响专利产品的收入。专利本质上排除了其他人使用受保护的发明。因此，以强大专利为后盾的产品在市场上出现模仿的可能性较小，即使发生这种情况，通过专利侵权的赔偿来弥补的可能性仍然存在。

另一方面，质量差的专利或具有不必要限制的专利可能会损害这一意图并影响整个业务。因此，不再忽视专利质量变得势在必行。

此外，在我们深入研究这个主题之前，让我们明白专利的质量与发明的质量不同。专利质量在于权利要求的范围，这会影响获得专利的目的。人们可以寻求专利来阻止竞争者使用发明或通过技术许可产生收益。但是，无论目标如何，质量仍然是关键因素。

让我们探索一些可以帮助知识产权律师获得广泛和优质专利的方法。

1.狭窄的专利权利要求

较窄的权利要求通常会获得快速授予专利，因为与具有更广泛的权利要求的申请相比，申请的专利局通知书次数较少。然而，这种方法在表面上显得有利可图；相对而言，将来会变得不那么有价值。

在与知识产权律师合作的过程中，我遇到了许多专利，由于独立权利要求中的不必要的特征，这些特征本来可以很容易转移到从属权利要求，因此专利权人无法执行这些专利。

鉴于对建立专利组合进行了大量投资，这些有残疾的专利困扰着一个致力于其货币化的知识产权顾问团队，因为这些专利在投入使用时不再适用。因此，必须判断权利要求的广泛性，以获得可以阻止竞争对手并获取许可费的强大专利。

示例 - 下面权利要求的特征中提到存在两个设备，显示为粗体和下划线 - 

响应于指示两个无线通信设备已经彼此接近的位置数据的处理，向两个无线通信设备中的每一个发送通知;

两个设备的存在限制了权利要求的范围，同时为竞争者提供了漏洞来提出替代方案，如，上述两个设备可能属于单独的实体，并且其中任何一个都不能满足该特征。因此，这是权利要求中的一个很大的限制，可以改为：

响应于指示两个无线通信设备已经彼此接近的位置数据的处理，向至少一个无线通信设备发送通知；

一个小的改变可以使许多产品属于该专利的范围。人们可以想象在狭窄的权利要求的基础上失去巨额利润。

2.规避设计

仅专注于本发明的中心思想的专利权利要求迟早会成为企业的负担。这是因为这些专利忽略了规避设计，后来竞争对手找到了在其产品中实施发明的出路而不侵犯其任何声明。这样的例子没个完，广泛的专利无法阻止竞争对手使用专利概念制造产品。

万一你发现自己处于产品回避设计以避免侵权的情况下，你不要灰心丧气。有一种应当这种回避设计产品的方法。

认为你需要的是广泛的权利要求，这是一种谬论。人们还需要确保广泛的有效性，包括适当覆盖规避设计以加强专利质量。

让我们考虑将规避设计视为黑客入侵发明概念。毕竟，人们必须以某种方式摒弃“全部特征规则”，为使用发明概念铺平道路，避免侵权风险。

难！有人可能会想。但是，这不是一项不可能完成的任务。如果让人规避设计，对专利活动的大量投资将徒劳无功。

例如，让我们使用我之前使用的相同的特征来说明规避设计。

原权利要求的特征：

响应于指示两个无线通信设备已经彼此接近的位置数据的处理，向两个无线通信设备中的每一个发送通知；

如果申请人继续执行上述权利要求的特征，其他公司可以通过对其产品进行一些小的改动来使用本发明。例如，竞争者可以通过添加第三设备来使用本发明。

为克服这种可能性，提出了多项独立权利要求。该特征的变体看起来像：

响应于指示两个无线通信设备已经彼此接近的位置数据的处理，向第三无线通信设备发送通知，其中第三无线通信设备有兴趣接收两个无线通信设备中的至少一个的位置数据；

3.适当范围 - 涵盖应用前景

优质专利包含发明的适当范围，即它应涵盖所有现有和未来的应用领域。

在许多应用领域中，发明通常变得可行，这取决于技术的深度相关性，并且还因为不断扩展的技术的相互依赖性模型。也就是说，人们不应该仅将本发明限制于发明人提到的研究领域。

有许多专利技术最初应该用于特定领域，但后来在完全不同的领域中找到了应用。例如，柯达就电影开发技术申请了专利，该技术专门用于后来在半导体芯片制造中应用的相机。

我已经深入解释了如何从专利的核心理念中推动多个子想法。

让我们再看一个例子 - 

示例 - 如果发明与GPS技术有关，则可以将GPS设备，移动电话和汽车导航系统中的地图视为本发明的共同应用领域。这是发明家可能提出的建议。但这就是全部应用领域吗？不是。

技术前景将表明，用户可以通过移动电话访问互联网，而互联网也提供在线广告。现在，如果有人在十年前就发现了这种技术关系，他就可以通过将GPS中的位置点与在线广告相联系，从而获得基于位置的广告的暗示，这在当今非常普遍。

所有这一切都可以通过技术前景分析得到，人们可以了解：

本发明与其他现有技术领域的交叉点。

渗透到现有技术领域的水平。

关于发明的未来扩展的提示。

4.现有技术检索的深度

基于该专利的目的，现有技术检索的深度可以变化。如果有人打算以攻击性专利申请为目的获得专利，即将来起诉他人，在开始时彻底检索要好过被告使专利无效时后悔。

同样，如果专利刚刚提交给技术交流或向竞争对手展示知识产权优势而不是诉讼工具，则可能不需要深入的现有技术检索。人们可以单独依靠审查员检索。

但是，不要忘记审查员也是一个人，并且在他的审限限制下，“人为错误”也是可能的。在过去的许多项目中，我们都发现了比审查员的更好的检索结果，并帮助我们的客户使相关专利无效。

因此，执行深入的现有技术检索的决定取决于申请人的目标，该目标进一步指导决定额外检索以找到审查员可能遗漏的内容。

结论：从表面上看，这些策略看起来很明显，而且经常被忽略。然而，许多知识产权顾问的目标是范围宽广和质量优秀的专利，他们可能已经在使用这些策略，以使他们的客户在竞争中领先一步。

您将如何处理这些信息？您将会利用这些信息，还是会将这些信息掩埋在每天闪过您脑海的无数信息中？现在是您做出决定的时候了。

How To Get Broader And Good Quality Patents

Authored By: Shikhar Sahni

Patents, for a long while, have been an integral part of business development strategy. Companies like ARM and Qualcomm, for example, have built their business around patents which constitute a major part of their revenue. And the quality of their patents, for sure, is playing a key role in it.

Lowballing on patent quality has its own risks. It does not only affect the direct income from royalties but can also affect the revenue from proprietary products. Patents by nature exclude others from using the protected invention. Therefore, products backed by strong patents have less likelihood of copycats appearing in the market and even if it happens the chances of recovery on the basis of patent infringement still holds.

A poor quality patent or a patent with unnecessary limitations, on the other hand, can compromise this intent and can impact the entire business.Thus, it becomes imperative to not ignore patent quality anymore. 

Further, before we go deep into the subject, let’s be clear that quality of a patent is different from that of an invention. Patent quality lies in the scope of claims, which, impacts the objective of getting a patent. One may seek a patent to just stop competitors from using the invention or for revenue generation through technology licensing. But, irrespective of the objective, quality remains a pivotal element.

Let’s explore some ways which can help IP counsels get broad and good quality patents.

1. Narrow Patent Claims

Narrow claims, more often, gets a patent granted fast as the application undergoes lesser office actions compared to the one with broader claims. This approach, though, appears lucrative on the surface, however; comparatively, will become less rewarding in future.

While working with IP counsels, I came across many patents which assignees weren’t able to enforce due to that unnecessary element in an independent claim which could have been shifted to dependent claims easily.

Given that huge investments were made for building a patent portfolio, such handicapped patents beset an IP council working on its monetization, as these patents flunk when put into use. Hence, it becomes mandatory to judge broadness of claims to get a strong patent that can keep competitors at bay and also fetches royalty.

Example – The clause mentioned here under mandates the presence of two devices which is shown as bold and underlined –

sending notifications to each of the two wireless communication devices in response to the processing of the position location data determining that the position location data indicates that the two wireless communication devices have become in proximity to each other;

The presence of two devices can limit the scope of infringement while providing a loophole to competitors to come up with alternatives where the two mentioned devices may belong to separate entities, and the clause may not be fulfilled by either of them. Hence, it’s a big limitation in a claim and can be changed to something like –

sending notifications to at least one of the wireless communication devices in response to the processing of the position location data determining that the position location data indicates that the two wireless communication devices have become in proximity to each other;

A small change can bring many products under the scope of the patent. One can imagine losing huge profit on the basis of narrow claims.

2. Design Around

Claims of a patent focusing only on the central idea of the invention, sooner or later become a dead load on a business. It is because these patents ignore design around and later a competitor finds a way out to implement the invention in his products without infringing any of its claims. And there is no end of examples where a broad patent was unable to stop competitors to manufacture products on the patented concept.

Just in case you find yourself in a situation where a product is designed around to avoid infringement, don’t you lose heart. There is a method to such designed around products. You can read about the method here: how to defeat designed around to prove infringement 

Thinking that a broad claim is all you need, is a fallacy. One also needs to ensure sufficiency of broadness which includes proper coverage of design around to strengthen the quality of a patent.

Let’s consider design around as hacking into the invention concept. After all, one has to just somehow shunt out the ‘All Element Rule’ to pave the path to use the invention concept and avoid the risk of infringement.

Difficult! One may think.  But, not an impossible task, though. If someone does that, the heavy investment made on the patenting activity will go in vain.

For example, let’s use the same clause to illustrate design around that I used earlier.

Original clause:

sending notifications to each of the two wireless communication devices in response to the processing of the position location data determining that the position location data indicates that the two wireless communication devices have become in proximity to each other;

If the applicant moves ahead with the above-mentioned clause, other companies may use the invention by doing some minor changes in their product. A competitor, for example, may use the invention by adding a third device.

To overcome such possibilities, multiple independent claims are filed. The variation of the clause will look something like:

sending notifications to a third wireless communication device in response to the processing of the position location data determining that the position location data indicates that the two wireless communication devices have become in proximity to each other, wherein the third wireless communication device is interested in receiving the location data of at least one of the two wireless communication devices;

3. Proper Scope — Covering Out Of The Blue Application Areas

A good quality patent encompasses the proper scope of an invention, that is, it should cover all existing as well as futuristic application areas.

An invention normally becomes viable in many application areas depending on the deep correlation of technologies and also because of the ever expanding inter-dependency model of technology. That said, one should never limit the invention only to the research areas mentioned by the inventor(s).

There are many patented technologies that initially were supposed to be for a particular field but later found applications in a totally different field. Kodak, for example, filed patents in film development technology that was meant for cameras which later found applications in semiconductor chip manufacturing.

I’ve explained in depth how you can drive multiple sub-ideas from the central idea of a patent. You can read it here: how to help you clients’ file more patents 

Let’s take another example –

Example – If an invention is related to GPS technology one may consider GPS devices, maps in mobile phone and car navigation systems as common application areas for the invention. This is what inventor may suggest. But is that all? No.

A technology landscape would reveal that from a mobile phone a user can access the internet which offers online advertisement. Now if someone would have checked the technology relationship a decade ago, he would have got a hint about location based advertisement by connecting the dots from GPS to an online advertisement, which is very common these days.

All this is possible with the help of a landscape analysis where one gets to know about:

• The intersection of the invention with other existing technology areas.

• The level of penetration into the existing technology areas.

• Hints about futuristic expansion for the invention.

4. The Depth Of Prior Art Searched

Based on the objective for the patent, the depth of prior art search may vary. If one intends to get a patent with the objective of offensive patent filing i.e. to sue others in future, it’s better to be thorough in the beginning then regret later when defenders invalidate the patent.

Similarly, if a patent is just filed to help in technology exchange or to showcase IP strength to competitors and not as a litigation tool, a deep prior art search may not be required. One can rely on the examiner search alone.

However, don’t forget that an examiner is also a human being and ‘human errors’ are possible under time constraint from his end, too. In many projects in the past, we found better results that an examiner and helped our clients invalidate concerned patents. One such account is here: how we find better results than an examiner.

Therefore, the decision to perform deep prior art search depends on one’s objective which further guides the decision to travel an extra mile to find what might have been missed by the examiner.

Conclusion: These strategies, on the surface, appear obvious and more often than not, get ignored. Many IP counsels, however, are targeting broad and good quality patents and chances are that they are already using these to keep their clients one step ahead of the competition.

What will you do with this information? Will you be taking advantage or will you let this information get buried in the pile of information that crosses your mind every other day? Now the onus is on you to decide.

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