Patents help an inventor to prevent unlawful use of his or her invention by other parties for their own economic advantage in an unlawful and unauthorized way. They allow the inventor to prosecute a person or firm for attempting to make such illegal use of the original invention or its process. However, you must keep certain things in mind when going for a legal action to deal with the problem of infringement.

Firstly, you should ensure that there has been a complete and perceptible infringement of your product secured by patent. In other words, the alleged product should have imitated all features of your product. It is only in certain special cases that anything short of a literal infringement is treated as a genuine infringement of a patent. However, this requires evidence to the effect that there are enough similarities and that the final effect that the imitated product creates is notably similar to the original product.

Secondly, you must have some legal interest in the patented product to be able to prosecute the offender, and you should not be an unrelated party. You can either be the owner of the patent or a licensee – exclusive or partial – of the product to be able to file a suit for infringement. You also have to consider the law of limitation of the jurisdiction and file a suit within the time allotted for such cases, as otherwise the claim would be treated as invalid.

You can take action against the manufacturer as well as the user of the product that you see as infringing your product, but you can do so only as long as your patent subsists according to law. After the termination of the patent date, no misuse of the product can be termed as an infringement against the patent.

Last but not the least, though patents stand on the strict liability principle, you should remember that the usage of a patent for research purposes is permitted and it does not constitute an infringement.

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