This article is written by European Patent Attorney Nina Skivesen.
Patent administration encompasses a range of tasks such as filing and submitting documents to patent authorities, meeting official deadlines, maintaining formal records, and perhaps most importantly, keeping an overview of everything.
Patent administration is just one of the factors that ensure the validity of your patent, and hence the protection of your invention. The administration becomes relevant from the very moment you have an invention, for which you wish to file a patent application, as must be ready to handle correspondence and deadlines from the authorities as soon as you file the patent application.
Precisely because patents are such a powerful intellectual property right, it is crucial to keep full control over administrative tasks, renewals is particularly relevant both before and after grant of a patent. Once you’ve obtained a patent, it can last up to 20 years from the filing date. However, this requires the payment of an annual renewal fee; otherwise, your exclusive rights will lapse.
The expiration of a patent can have major consequences. For example, you may no longer market the product as “patented.” Once a patent lapses it cannot be reinstated, and your market opens to competitors. This means that your technology becomes available to everyone to produce, sell, export and import.
At Patrade, we have experienced specialists who can assist with all aspects of patent administration, ensuring you don't miss important deadlines. In addition, our advisors can help assess whether a patent should be renewed.
We’ve compiled a list to help you decide when it might be a good idea to renew a patent, and when it might not be.
To renew or let it lapse – here's our guide:
We recommend renewing the patent if:
- You still want to exclude competitors from the market.
- You have licensed your patent rights. If you stop paying the renewal fee, the basis for the license agreement is void.
- You actively use the patent in your marketing, e.g., as a quality seal, to differentiate from competitors, to brand yourself as a high-tech company, or as part of your employer branding.
- You expect to use your patent rights in a licensing deal with a competitor, e.g., via a license swap.
We recommend letting the patent lapse if:
- You are no longer active in the geographic market where the patent is valid, neither in production nor in sales.
- You already hold a strong market position and there are only a few years left on the patent term, so you may want to save on renewal costs.
- You have developed a new version of your product and obtained newer patent protection.
Before allowing a patent or patent application to lapse, you should carefully consider whether it would impact your business if a competitor were to enter the market with a similar product shortly afterward.
