What to do if the third party’s patent is blocking your business?

Senior Lawyer at Bolotov & Partners, Patent Attorney of the Republic of Kazakhstan Damirzhan Amireyev gives his answers.

The information portal Zakon.kz has published an article by D. Amireyev titled “Someone else’s patent is blocking your business. What can you do about it?”

In this article, Damirzhan addresses a pressing issue for many entrepreneurs and company executives: what to do if, when launching production or bringing a product to the market in Kazakhstan, it turns out that the technical solution you intend to use is already protected by another company’s patent.

The article examines three main ways of action:

Negotiate – acquire a license or the patent itself;

Work around – modify your solution so that it does not fall within the scope of the patent claims;

Challenge – prove in court that the patent should not have been granted.

Special attention is given to the third option – judicial invalidation of the patent. The author emphasizes that illegal use of someone else’s patent carries serious risks: the patent holder is entitled to demand not only the cessation of production and compensation for losses, but also a statutory compensation in the amount of 10,000 to 50,000 units of Monthly Calculation Index (MCI) – approximately 90 to 450 thousand US dollars (the 2026 MCI is 4,325 KZT – approx.US $9 as of August 2026).

In addition, the article explains in detail the differences between national and Eurasian patents, as well as recent legislative changes that have simplified the procedure for challenging the validity of Eurasian patents in Kazakhstan.

The article is a practical guide for business owners and managers – free from excessive legal jargon.

Full text of the article: https://prg.kz/document/?doc_id=35387832