Lapse Date: The date when a patent is no longer enforceable in a jurisdiction due to a failure to pay renewal fees. Often, the patent can be reinstated if appropriate fees are paid within a limited period after the lapse date. Often the patent can be reinstated within a limited period.
Level of Ordinary Skill: The level of skill in the art to which an invention pertains that is used in judging whether a disclosure or claim is enabling.
License: A transfer of patent rights that does not amount to an assignment. A license, which can be exclusive or non-exclusive, does not give the licensee the legal title to the patent.
Limitation: Language in a claim that constrains the breath of a claim.
Literal Infringement: This means that a product, process, apparatus, or composition of matter satisfies every recital of a claim literally.
Long-Felt Need: This means a problem facing a particular technical area that has gone unsolved for a prolonged period. The presumption is if the solution had been obvious to those skilled in the art, they would have solved the problem.
Lost Profits: This is a measure of damages and is generally keyed to the profits that could have been the patentee’s, but were lost to the infringer. The alternate standard, where the patentee is either not in the business or cannot prove that profits made by the infringer would have been his or hers, is to employ the standard of the statute that is not less than a reasonable royalty.
