Selling your invention too early may cost you your patents

In a unanimous opinion, the US Supreme Court solidified that inventors lose patent protection for inventions that they had sold or offered to sell more than a year before submitting the patent application - even if those sales were confidential and did not publicize the invention’s details.

The decision in Helsinn Healthcare v Teva provides much needed certainty and continues to incentivize innovation-driven businesses to apply for patents before engaging in sales and marketing activity.

At issue was the scope of the on-sale bar, a part of US patent law since 1836. Before Congress enacted the America Invents Act in 2011, the bar prohibited patenting of an invention “on sale in [the United States] more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.”