Patents offer legal recognition to the right of an inventor to stop others from making use of his or her invention for their personal gains. They give the inventor the option to sue a person or a company for deliberate infringement of his patented product or its underlying process. However, you ought to keep a few important aspects in mind when going for a legal option against patent infringement.

Firstly, you must make sure that there has been a complete and perceptible infringement of your product secured by patent. In other words, it should infringe all the major aspects of your patented product. Although in special cases where some of the features of the invention have not been imitated, it can still be considered as an infringement. However, the imitated product should be based on similar principles and produce the same impact as the patented product for such a claim for infringement to be upheld in the court of law.

Secondly, you need to have some kind of direct connection with the patent in order to bring prosecution against the infringer. You can either be the owner of the patent or a licensee - exclusive or partial - of the product in order to be eligible for filing a suit for violation. Further, in order to make sure that your suit is admitted for hearing, you need to file the suit within the allotted time under the limitation statute of your country.

Although you can take legal action against not only the producer of the counterfeit product but also against the user of the product, any such step can be taken only while the patent subsists. Once the period of patent has expired, no action can be brought against any infringement.

Last but not the least, though patents are based upon the strict liability principle, you must remember that the use of a patent for conducting research is allowed and it is not considered as tantamount to infringement.