Patent Update: Have You Marked Your Products?

Good news — you got a patent that covers your best-selling product. You might think that you have taken all the essential steps to safeguard your invention with your patent. But to collect the maximum amount of damages from those who may be infringing your patent, you would need to give proper notice of your patent. One of the best ways to provide notice is by properly marking any product covered by a patent with the patent number — a practice called patent marking.

Benefits of patent marking. The benefits of marking products with patent numbers that cover the products are twofold. Marking patented products gives competitors and would-be infringers actual notice of the existence of the patents that the patent owner believes cover the product so that they may avoid inadvertently infringing the patents. A common business intelligence practice is to acquire your competitors’ products. If one of those products has a patent number marked on it, then at the very least, the competitor should have all of the information necessary to investigate whether their competitive product will infringe that patent and to avoid infringement through a design-around if necessary.

Marking patented products also allows the patent owner to collect past damages from any infringer in patent litigation. Past damages refers to the amount of damages from the initiation of the infringing activity (or the six-year statute of limitations, whichever is less) up to the...