PATENTS

I was going through Patents as a branch of Intellectual Property laws and I got filled with probing questions unanswered. Before I commence with these questions, I would have to first discuss my views on Patent Law. 

According to me," Patent is a monopoly right granted by the state (has to be a state recognized as sovereign and absolute both internally and externally) to an inventor for a limited period of time for a sole reason of making public the invention made''. The right given is an exclusive one which enables the patent holder to exclude any one (person or persons) from making, using, importing or selling the patent innovation within the scheduled patent period given.

WHAT THE RIGHT OF A PATENT OWNER ENTAILS..

Amidst other rights of a patent owner, the one which concerns my interest is that a patent owner has the right to preclude any person from exploiting the patented invention which further bestows the right
           a) to obtain an injunction to restrain the                     performance or the likely performance,               by any personwithout his   authorisation,                                             

          b)to claim damages from any person who,            having knowledge of the patent,                            performed any of the acts without owners             authorisaton.

          c) to claim compensation from any person who, without his authorisation, performed any of                    the inventions claimed in the published application, as if a patent had been created for that                  invention, provided that the said person, at the time of the performance of the act had :

• actual knowledge of that invention and that he was using a subject matter in a published application
• Recieved a notice that the invention he was making was a subject matter in an application, such application being identified in the notice by its serial number.

The clause "b" of the above point mentioned forms my first question which is "if only persons who have knowledge of the patent invention at the time of making their own moves is punishable, how about the persons who hadn't knowledge of the same but has caused huge loss to the patent holder?

If the law does not provide remedy for the patent owner irrespective of whether or not there is a prior knowledge of the same, then there is a loop hole. The problem is, most persons guilty of this would take a defence of "no prior knowledge" so the patent holder do not have an exclusive right in the first place contrary to what the right is said to bestow. How can it be proven beyond doubts that was void the slightest knowledge about the patent invention? shouldn't there be at least, some sort of compensation to rigid the right of the patent owner?

Before my second question, we have to keep in mind that a patent MUST be a new invention, a novel invention. I came to think of a situation where an old drug has been in existence for a specific cure and later, a person discovers a new use for this old pharmaceutical drug, is it covered under patented inventions? owing to the clear truth that it is a new applicability of something old invented by another originally.

To be listed as an inventor in a patented invention, such person must have contributed to the invention since there can be more than one patent owners if they both are the inventors. my third question is," is PATENT OWNERSHIP DIFFERENT FROM OWNERSHIP?" Contribution to the invention, is it financially or technically? what of a situation where a person who has paid for all the cost of the product invented but has contributed nothing technically to this invention, does he have a patent right over this product? who becomes the patent owner? The sponsor or the inventor?

see this link for more infomation on Patents.