ABSTRACT
Once a patent has been granted, a patentee owns a piece of property. This can both be exploited, and protected from trespass by the unauthorised. This trespass is termed ‘infringement’. For infringement to be determined, the boundaries of the patentee’s property must be marked out. This is done both by the claims, which define the invention, and by the infringing acts which are defined in s 60 of the Patents Act (PA) 1977.
