Patent Quality: It’s Now or Never

Patent Quality: It's Now or Never

A LexisNexis White Paper

by Brian Elias Director, IP Product Planning

Intellectual Property (IP) attorneys have always appreciated the importance of patent quality in the creation of patent applications. Strong patent applications make for strong defensible patents, enabling businesses and inventors to benefit from their research efforts and produce new and innovative products. To that end, innovators rely heavily on the expertise of counsel to effectively capture the full scope of rights associated with their underlying innovations so that they may fully realize the fruits of their labor.

On the other hand, low-quality patents offer little or no value and can be very expensive to maintain. This is bad for business because it essentially makes them cost centers— instead of profit generators— and tends to inhibit some companies from even pursuing patents at all. Moreover, if patents are consistently invalidated, their perceived value as integral components of corporate IP strategy may be dismissed.

The America Invents Act (AIA), federal legislation that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama on September 16, 2011, represents the most significant change to the U.S. patent system since 1952. With the passage of the AIA, the importance of patent quality has been heightened significantly.

The message to patent attorneys is clear: if you weren’t already focused on patent quality for efficiency reasons, you need to be now for practical systemic reasons.

Download the full white paper.