QUESTION
U.S. patent holder partnering with a Canadian, trouble ahead?
Asked on Feb 10th, 2013 on Patents - Illinois
More details to this question:
I, being a U.S. patent holder am about to partner with a Canadian. This person will be selling my product to Canada and to the U.S. exclusively for 3 years. Since I have no patent for CA, can he simply decide at some point to apply for a patent on my product thereby cut me out of the market in Ca? Or, should I encourage him to do so knowing he will gain a corner on the market with the new patent and rather than spend 25G on another mold,he will use my mold and continue to pay me as a partner? It gets very confusing as you cross borders! Please help! This has me quite worried. Thank you so much, I invent.
1 ANSWER
I believe that it is safe to say that more than one year has elapsed from the filing of your US patent application that resulted in the US patent to which you have referred. That being the case, it is no longer possible to obtain a patent in Canada or anywhere else. However, since you have no protection in Canada, you need to make sure that the agreeement with your Canadian partner provides sufficient safeguards to insure that your partner does not use information obtained from you to make his own mold and to go into business in Canada in competition with you.
Answered on Feb 11th, 2013 at 3:13 PM