Tearing Down A Product to Look for Patent Infringement

In today’s world where most companies depend on other manufacturers to supply them with the necessary components to build a desired end product, it becomes strikingly important for a patent asserting body to understand the infringing parties and their role and significance in carrying out the infringement by the accused product. Product teardown reporting is a mechanical decomposition of technology-based devices. In industry, product teardown is generally used to understand how product works and guide enterprise toward more streamlined solutions in future.

Often referred as Bill of Materials (BOM), product teardown is basically a list of components, parts, modules, raw materials and their quantities required to build a product. In case of electronic devices, it helps to dive into the product and look for components and their contribution in patent infringement. Looking at subcomponents and theirs features/functions, an expert can easily pinpoint direct, indirect and contributory infringers. At the same time, one can calculate damages to be claimed from each infringer. Also, it helps patent holders to identify the actual infringer of its patented technology and other contributors that manufactured custom components for the product which indirectly resulted in infringement of accused product.

You can read more about patent infringement and about our approach towards preparing an infringement analysis report here.

We opened a mobile phone to list down and understand the role of underlying components in a patent infringement. For a researcher, teardown provides not only the list of components but also their role in the device and interrelationship between the components. Here is the summary report that covers list of components present a popular mobile phone

Author: Sanjay Sharma, Senior Associate- Patents at Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorneys. In case of any queries please contact/write back to us at [email protected]