Patent monitoring provides you with timely notice of any new, potentially infringing patent applications as they become available – making it possible for you to take steps to protect your intellectual property and prevent a competitor’s application from being issued as a patent. When patent monitoring identifies a potentially infringing application, you (or your attorney, on your behalf) can oppose it by various statutory means – including Protests, Re-Examinations, and Interferences.

Formerly, a patent was not made publicly available until issuance. With recent legislation, a patent is now made available as an application before the issuance date. This allows you (or your attorney, on your behalf) to object to the application before it ever becomes a patent.

By doing so, you may take steps towards avoiding becoming entrenched in a costly and time-consuming patent infringement suit, by challenging the claims of the application while it is still in the prosecution stage.  This gives you an opportunity to remove or change the claims of the competitive patent application so that they don't infringe upon the claims of your patent .

And since it is generally a lesser burden of proof to challenge the patent application during the publication stage, it is in your best interest to intervene before a patent is issued.