Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
Hellmark, patents have to be "enabling." If a patent is sufficiently vague that it does NOT enable someone "skilled in the art" to create such a device then it is easily challenged. It doesn't have to enable someone in the general public but it would have to enable a specialist in that technical field.
There is a different cost to challenging patents depending on whether you want some input to the re-examination ("inter parte" versus "ex parte"). Including legal fees it commonly runs $10-50K to re-examine a US patent (assuming the USPTO agrees to do it) and can run higher if you have several inter parte rounds that require significant patent attorney time. That is one order of magnitude less expensive than a similar lawsuit in a US court.
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Yeah they can be challenged, but that is expensive, and time consuming. Most of the time, the ones with the ability to challenge, don't have the resources of the ones with the vague patents. I've known people go up against companies with vague patents, and while they were in the right, they went bankrupt before anything was ruled in their favor, due to things being drug out.