Home PatentsMaintaining
your patentMonitoring
and infringement
Monitoring and Infringement
Once you own IP, you are responsible for monitoring the way it is used and protecting
it against infringement. This means you must be diligent in appropriately safeguarding
and maintaining secrecy, communicating your legal rights and if necessary, defending
your rights through legal action. This is to ensure that only you can turn your
ideas into a commercial reality.
Don’t wait for someone to infringe your IP. Putting a strategy in place
to deal with infringement, before it happens, should be part of your overall
protection and commercialisation strategy. If you find your IP is being copied
or used by someone else without your permission, there are a number of actions
you can take. These range from a letter of warning from your attorney, negotiations
to settle out of court and, if this fails, court action. Whatever action you
do take, pursue it vigorously and make sure any infringer knows you are serious
about protecting your IP. Delay could also jeopardise your legal rights to obtain
an injunction.
For assistance with handling IP infringement, you should speak to an IP
professional.
|
