Who can sue and be sued for Patent infringement?
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Who can sue and be sued for Patent infringement? Video Transcript
The question here is who you can sue and who can be sued for patent infringement. Any company that is infringing your claim in a country that you have patent protection in, you could sue. Generally, the patent owner can sue the manufacturer, the retailer, the customer of a protected technology. Oftentimes, they will sue the party that has the deepest pockets in reality, but in the same time, suing people for patent is often a wrong thing to do because it is going to be a very expensive process for an individual inventor. It is better to try to find a good license that is mutually beneficial to both parties and make sure you are very confident that you have a unique monopoly right that someone else is infringing. So doing the research upfront is very important, making sure you have clearly mapped your claims to the infringing product and to have enough evidence to show infringement if later you challenge on that basis are key. There might be some inconsistencies like vicarious liability or a company is liable for the infringement of a subsidiary, for example. [Audio cuts out 1:10