A patent license is a redirection of rights that an individual or organization may agree to usually in consideration of some sort of payment. By using the phrase ‘patent’, what is usually licensed is an application or actual grant. The application may be a provisional application or a more traditional non-provisional application. The BRITISH COLUMBIA FAKE DRIVERS LICENCE may be for any type of patent or application and is not limited to utility patents. Licenses are usually written documents. A license may be for a specific application or patent or may be more general and could cover all the patents and applications in a particular technical area or all owned by a particular party.
The patent grant is the grant which the government awards to the inventor or inventors of the application. The grant is a limited monopoly which allows the inventor (initially) to exclude others from practicing the grant. It does not give the inventor an exclusive right to practice the invention. There may be other patents which may cause infringement while practicing the invention. The grant comes into existence when the government issues the grant to the inventor as a result of the patent application meeting the necessary requirements of the government for example the Patent and Trademark Office. The grant does not exist for the application.
The inventor of a patent application has rights to the application which may be transferred to another individual or organization. These rights may include the right for a license if a patent application should issue. An assignment may be used to transfer the rights between individuals or organizations, and the assignment may be recorded in the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).
With both an exclusive license and a nonexclusive license, the owner retains ownership of the patent. However, the patent owner gives up almost all of the remaining rights to the patent for the period of the exclusive license. The license should address the issue of the patents covered by the exclusive license after the period of the exclusive license has expired. The exclusive license may state that all rights cease after the exclusive license has expired or the exclusive license may state that the rights continue for the patents covered by the exclusive license (residual license rights).
The licensee (who obtains the rights from the licensor) of an exclusive license should receive all ownership rights to the covered patents except for title to the patent.. The owner or licensor transferors all rights of the patent which may include the right to sue for infringement and the right to license to the licensee. Additionally, the licensee should receive the right to sub-license the patent to others, the right to sue for patent infringement and the right to receive royalties. However, any license may be limited to a pre-determined field of use. A condition of the license may stipulate that the licensee will not be licensed to anything outside of the pre-determined field of use.
A sales tool. A sales tool license may be used when the prospective licensee is not currently practicing the patented invention and as a consequence does not need to take a license. The licensee may contend that the patented technology is advantageous to the prospective licensee by being cheaper or offering advantages to prospective buyers. The licensee will take the license in order to achieve additional financial rewards.
An offensive license. A prospective licensee may be currently using the patented technology and as a consequence, may be subject to a license because the licensee is infringing the patent. The fear of a lawsuit and the associated cost may be sufficient for the prospective licensee to take a license under the patent. The terms of the license may include a fixed sum to compensate for past infringement and may include a specified amount in order to compensate for future use of the technology covered by the patent. The terms of the license may be based on a fixed percentage of actual sales.
