Patent Attorney and Founder
Hi everybody! I’m J.D. Houvener, your host of the Bold Today Show, where you, the inventor or entrepreneur, get your daily inspiration so that you can go make the world a better place.
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Alright, we’re talking about IP, intellectual property insurance, and it’s a five-part series. This is the third session. Yes, we talked about the first type of insurance policy that you can get if you’re going down the process of getting a patent, and that’s a patent infringement policy. Meaning, if we get that patent granted, as we talked about yesterday, you will have the ability to have coverage for paying your attorney fees and court costs if there are any for going after an alleged infringer.
Today, we’re going to talk about just the opposite. Let’s say you’ve gone down the initial step of doing a patentability search with your attorney. Let’s say it’s a Bold Patents attorney. Through diligence and effort and searching, unfortunately, the answer comes back saying, “Look, we don’t recommend that you file. We think there’s already something that’s been out there and published on this, and we don’t think you can get a patent on this specific invention.”
Right. But you still love it. It’s still your passion, and you want to pursue it in the marketplace. The next question that you would probably want to ask is, “Hey, if I start making and selling this out in the public, am I likely going to be sued? And will I be sued meritoriously, meaning will I really lose and be at a disadvantage, and will I be ceased from moving forward with my business?”
So, that question would normally be addressed in what’s called a freedom-to-operate opinion. And those are quite extensive, expensive, and time-intensive. The main issue there is that for the inventor or the business owner, rather, at this point, they decided not to file their patent or seek an application. They want to simply move the product into the market, but they want to have some protection. And that’s what this insurance is for.
So, through a third-party broker, we introduced the business owner to a broker that can help provide a policy – a patent defense policy. And so, if there is a patent infringement suit against them, they will be able to use the coverage to help hire legal counsel to defend against infringement. And it would, of course, begin with attacking the validity of the accused patent, going after the fact that, “Hey, I’m not really infringing,” whatever the case may be. But it’s the ability for that business owner to stay in business, to actually afford that litigation. It’s a wonderful solution. I’d love to talk with you more about it. If you have more questions, if you want to do that, please give us a call.