Regionality:
Chinese patents are only valid in China, and American patents are valid in the United States.
If the company has no production or sales activities in the United States, and the American company has not applied for a patent in China, the company can use it directly.
If the company has production, sales, etc. activities in the United States, the patents of the American company must be considered.
Timeliness:
The calculation method for the term of U.S. patent rights is: for patents applied after 1995/6/8, 20 years are calculated from the filing date, and for previous applications, 20 years are calculated from the filing date. The longer of 20 years from the date of announcement or 17 years from the date of announcement shall be considered. In addition, you must also pay attention to whether it is a continuation case or a division case, and whether the USPTO has extended the patent term. This is a relatively complicated issue.
If the patent term is no longer long, of course you can bargain at a higher price; if the patent has expired, you don’t have to pay any fees. It is already a public technology and everyone can use it at will.
Patentability:
All Utility products in the United States have undergone substantive examination, but the situation is also complicated when determining the scope of protection. The most basic thing is to see whether the scope of the claim is reasonable. If the scope is too large, it will easily be invalidated by others. If the scope is too small, the things that should be protected will not be protected and will be used by the public for free. In addition to what is seen in the claims themselves, many other factors can adversely affect scope. For example, some words said during the application process and modifications to claims will be used to limit the scope of interpretation of claims. For continuation cases, division cases, etc., related cases may affect each other/limit the scope of protection. There are also some issues in the application process, such as whether there was fraud during the application process, whether there were any obligations that were not fulfilled, etc., whether intentionally or unintentionally, they will have an adverse impact on the scope of rights. Also, whether the embodiment is the best known mode (best mode). ...There are a lot of things to pay attention to, and they are much more complicated than those in China. It takes a lot of effort to understand the issues mentioned above.
If the claims themselves are not written reasonably enough, the patent will definitely be discounted. For continuation cases, split cases, etc., although the number of patents seems to be large, the actual technical difference is not too big, and can be calculated by using a coefficient. During the patent application process, you need to read the official documents to see if there is anything unfavorable, and what adverse consequences the modification of the claims will have. As for some procedural issues, you can dig them out from official documents, but you have to be very careful to find them.
As a reminder, if you want these patents to make corresponding products, you must take into account many practical problems in the implementation process. Some things that are not reflected in the patents must be taken into consideration. The other party must provide technical support in addition to patents to ensure that the company can truly implement these patents. Otherwise, it will be a waste of money to get a bunch of patents that are of no use.