A patent is a trade between society and an inventor. In patenting, the inventor discloses his or her secret, makes the invention public and in exchange is provided a temporary exclusive right to use the invention professionally in a certain country. Others are provided the opportunity to learn from the new invention and thus give up their right to exploit the invention in the country in question.

Always a fair trade?

It is the task of the National Board of Patents and Registration to ensure that the trade is fair to society. Indeed, a patent will only be granted if legal preconditions are met, in other words, the invention is novel, inventive and industrially applicable. Furthermore, the description of the invention in the patent application must be clear enough to enable a professional person to use the invention on the basis of this. However, it is not the Board’s task to control whether the patent applicant receives a sufficiently comprehensive exclusive right for the patent that he or she would be entitled to with regard to the information he or she has disclosed. Therefore, if an invention is described in a way that enables a person skilled in the art to use it, but some of the methods to carry out the invention are left outside the exclusive right defined with the patent, the trade will be useful for society but unprofitable for the patent holder.

The patent applicant’s interests are only supervised by the patent applicant – or his or her representative. Therefore, the contents of the patent application are crucial.

B is for business-oriented

It is only natural that if the patent applicant is happy with less – i.e. less comprehensive patent protection – than what he or she would be entitled to by making the invention public then the drafting of the patent application as well as its processing, or the trade negotiations, will be considerably easier, faster and less expensive. Let us call this solution patent application A. It is equally natural – as in trades in general – that the one who wants more in exchange for his or her contribution, in this case for making his or her invention public, must be prepared for more challenging negotiations and more laborious drafting of the application. Let us call the application resulting from such efforts patent application B.

Berggren’s IPR experts are capable of producing the highest quality of work for the inventor. We are particularly happy to draft business-oriented applications like patent application B. A patent with an effective and sufficiently comprehensive protection is by far a better IPR when the idea is to use the invention for successful, long-term business. And who wouldn’t want that? If your company does, read more detailed examples of patent applications A and B – again using the above-mentioned trade analogy. The examples are available here.

With best regards

Janne Väänänen
European Patent Attorney
Berggren Oy Ab