Josh Sloat

In a globalized economy, it’s essential to understand that patents are still nationalized documents. For example, a U.S. patent only grants the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, and importing the claimed invention within the United States. It has no bearing on activities in Europe, Canada, Mexico, China, or anywhere else in the world. To restrict activities there, you will typically need a patent granted in each relevant country. This can boil down to filing and prosecution on a per-country basis. However, those seeking protection in Europe do have some additional options for a single application granting protection in multiple nations!

If you look closely enough, you’ll find patent numbers on most of the physical products around you. Much like their copyright and trademark cousins, these designations are far from cosmetic. Instead, they serve a statutory requirement to provide public notice about your protected intellectual property. In the case of patent marking, not only does it reduce the risk of infringement because you are informing potential infringers of the patent’s existence, but the notice also marks the point in time to which you can go back for collecting on awarded damages.

In today’s global economy, the importance of international patent protection cannot be overstated. Your invention could be conceived of with a workforce distributed across several continents. Your manufacturing could occur in Asia or India, while your products are shipped into and distributed from ports in the target markets of the world’s largest economies. Competitors and infringers could be next-door neighbors or perhaps across the pond. But as you’ll learn today, there is no such thing as an International Patent – no one global patent that protects you everywhere. If you want to protect your rights in a particular country or jurisdiction, you need to get a patent in that particular country or jurisdiction.

As more and more states relax restrictions on both medical and recreational uses of marijuana and hemp, the U.S. cannabis industry is projected to reach $50 billion in sales this year and over $74.6 billion by 2032. This rapid growth is occurring despite immense challenges posed by a complex and conflicting web of legal disparities between federal and state laws. These legal challenges include limited access to financial institutions and the inability to transport products across state lines, but what about patents?

If a court stripped away your property rights, wouldn’t you at least want an explanation? In this month’s episode of Patently Strategic, we discuss the Federal Circuit’s practice of applying rule 36 at an alarming rate to revoke inventors’ patent rights on appeal without explanation and ParkerVisions attempt to get the Supreme Court to take the case to hopefully stop this innovation-crippling practice.