The significance of patents for Transponder technologies Modern day transponders are technical developments by various party's scientists and engineers. For this reason protection in the form of patenting is needed to allow companies to benefit from their developments, meaning that the contents of patents are also important to those wishing to monitor current developments in these new technologies. The inventor does need to file his invention in those countries where he wants the protection. A patent prevents others from making, using or selling that invention without a license for the life of the patent in those countries where it has been filed and granted. In addition the vast majority of patents are not successfully commercially exploited and do not result in a financial return for their owners.
Patents have descriptions of their inventions and they have claims .
The protection is afforded by the claims , which are agreed with by the respective examiners of each country. Therefore if anyone is concerned about infringing someone elses patent, it is necessary to obtain a copy of the granted patent and examine the claims to check for infringement. The descriptions are very useful as they will describe the invention in sufficient detail to allow the examiners to verify the validity of the claims and are the inventor's disclosure to the global community about his invention. A further useful property of patent documents is that the inventor is required to declare all the previously known information about his invention, which is listed as prior art . This allows readers to trace significant prior patents impacting on the technology.