1. Can I sue him for infringement after the patent expires?
After the patent expires, the patent right is invalid, and the use of the invalid patent does not constitute patent infringement, and it is impossible to sue others for patent infringement.
patent law of the people's republic of china
Article 42 The term of patent right for invention is 20 years, and the term of patent right for utility model and patent right for design is 10 years, counting from the date of application.
Article 47 An invalid patent right shall be regarded as nonexistent from the beginning.
The decision to declare the patent right invalid has no retrospective effect on the patent infringement judgments and conciliation statements made and executed by the people's court before the patent right was declared invalid, the decisions on handling patent infringement disputes that have been performed or executed, and the patent licensing contracts and patent transfer contracts that have been performed. However, if the patentee's malice causes losses to others, it shall make compensation.
If the patent infringement compensation, patent exploitation fee and patent transfer fee are not returned in accordance with the provisions of the preceding paragraph, which obviously violates the principle of fairness, they shall be returned in whole or in part.
Second, what penalties will be imposed for infringing others' patent rights?
1, administrative responsibility
For patent infringement, the administrative department for patent affairs has the right to order the infringer to stop the infringement, order it to correct, and impose a fine. The administrative department for patent affairs may also mediate the amount of compensation for patent infringement at the request of the parties concerned.
2. Civil liability
(1) Stop the infringement
Stopping the infringement means that the patent infringer should immediately stop the ongoing patent infringement according to the decision of the department in charge of patent work or the judgment of the people's court.
(2) Compensation for losses
The amount of compensation for infringement of patent rights shall be determined according to the losses suffered by the patentee or the interests gained by the infringer; If it is difficult to determine the losses suffered by the infringer or the benefits obtained by the infringer, it can be reasonably determined by referring to the multiple of the patent license fee.
(3) Eliminate the influence
When the infringing act of the infringer damages the goodwill of the patented product in the market, the infringer should bear the legal responsibility of eliminating the influence in an appropriate way and admit his own infringing act to eliminate the adverse influence on the patented product.
3. Criminal responsibility
In accordance with the provisions of the Patent Law and the Criminal Law, if the circumstances are serious, the person directly responsible shall be investigated for criminal responsibility.
From the above analysis, we know that according to the provisions of the patent law, if a patent has a protection period, it will be invalid after the protection period. There is no infringement of invalid patent, so after the patent expires, others can freely use the patent and cannot sue the user for patent infringement.