Two Broad Categories of Patent

Patent attorney William Bryan Farney possesses more than three decades of experience in the courtroom. After litigating several high-stakes patent disputes, William Bryan Farney is familiar with a range of patent infringement and intellectual property infringement matters.

According to United States patent law, a person can infringe upon a patent directly or indirectly. The most obvious form of infringement is direct infringement, which is selling, using, or importing a patented invention or idea without getting authorization from the patent owner.

The unauthorized version of the patented product or service will infringe if it meets the legal requirements of the claims of the patent owner's patent.

Unauthorized parties are held liable for direct infringement whether they were aware of the patent’s existence or not.

Indirect infringement occurs when an unauthorized party encourages or contributes to an infringing activity committed by a different entity. The product or service produced by the infringing entity generally must meet all, or the material portion of the limitations of at least one independent claim of infringement.

Two subcategories of indirect infringement are contributory and induced. In contributory infringement, generally, the unauthorized party knowingly provides a product or component to a third party which is a material part of an infringement. In induced infringement, generally, an unauthorized party knows about the patent and causes a third party to directly infringe upon it.