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> when in product development does patent police [sic] knock on your door and have the right to drag you to the court? Generally, you can be sued for infringem
by dctoedt 6y ago
> when in product development does patent police [sic] knock on your door and have the right to drag you to the court?
Generally, you can be sued for infringement whenever you make, use, etc., anything that comes within the scope of any issued, unexpired, not-yet-invalidated claim.
There's a nebulous experimental-use exception to liability; it's currently of uncertain scope [0].
> If I build a factory that produces chairs, and then hoard all those chairs in my house, can I be told to knock it off?
Generally, yes — if the chairs come within the scope of an issued, unexpired claim that hasn't yet been invalidated, then simply making the chairs constitutes infringement of that claim.
> What if I build the factory and then have it just stand there, producing nothing?
If the factory itself doesn't infringe a claim, then there's no infringement under the stated circumstances.
Same disclaimer as above.
[0] See, e.g. https://www.lrrc.com/webfiles/TCL-KK_DS.pdf https://www.lrrc.com/webfiles/TCL-KK_DS.pdf (not an endorsement).
- aasasd 6y agoThanks! It seems the solution is to make a ton of legs and a ton of seats, and then to not slap them together until the day the patents expire.