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Patents for the Little People?
_ph1ux_ asks: "I have an idea that i would like to patent. I have called several patent attorney's in the San Francisco Bay Area and inquired about the costs associated with doing a patent search and filing. I was quoted a flat fee for the search by some, ranges by others - and some more sound sounding advice from others. Some attorney's want $450 for the search and a range of $3-6,000 for the filing - with up to six months before they are ready to just file the application for you.
I have been researching on USPTO website to see if there are any pre-existing patents that cover my idea now for several days, and so far have found none. In the past I was able to quickly locate existing patents that thwarted my previous patent attempts - so this time it looks promising. My personal feelings for attorneys and lawyers aside - I want to know what have other slashdotters done with regards to pursuing patents, specifically if it is at all possible for an IANAL to successfully apply for a patent (cheaply)? Can you tell me what other avenues there are for me online or otherwise, while not giving away a large stake in my invention?"
...just file it yourself. Last I checked this was a valid option, if you don't mind the mountain of paperwork.
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
*Whips out paper and pen*
So what exactly does this product do? Please be as specific as possible, and email me any drawings you have of said product, including highly detailed autocad drawings.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
IANAL but I would suggest you consult one. Don't hold that against me, IANAL!! Anyway if you can't consult one you could just simply file your patent and see if it gets rejected (IANAL Don't quote me on that!!!). Anyway, IANAL, good luck.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I have an idea that i would like to patent.
Traditionally, you couldn't patent ideas, only implementations...
Of course, the USPTO has ignored that for at least a decade...
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I strongly recommend going to to do searches on trademarks for your idea.
Also, I like "Patent It Yourself", which is how I got my patent application filed. It's a really good text. Also, if you need representation, talk to the guys at GrayCary. They are a good bunch of folks, and they will do some consulting gratis and defer payment......
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Wow, I didn't realise that it costs thousands of dollars to check out a patent. So what do those guys who make "joke" patents do, like the guy who patented how to sit on a swing, or the patent on how to tie your shoelaces and crap like that, do people really spend $5000 just to show that the Patent Office misses daft patent applications ? Presumeably *they* (the silly patent people) can do it cheaply ?
You might be able to find an attorney that will do the work without a flat fee in exchange for a percentage of the revenue stream created by the patent. We have a family friend whose father was a patent attorney and did *very well*, thank you by taking this approach on occasion.
The usual warnings about finding an ethical attorney (an oxymoron, I know) would likely apply even more in this situation, though.
This is nice and timely! I've been thinking about this myself lately, and I've wondered something different: In todays highly litigatious society, are you opening yourself up for alot of hassle in filing a patent? No question that getting your origonal idea locked in before anybody else is a good thing, but what happens when somebody challanges you, or you have to challange somebody else? It may be a remote possiblity, but are 'the little guys' assuming lots of personal risk in basically defying the world to capitalize on their idea? You find a lawyer with a flat rate to file your patent, then what? Where are you going to get the tens of thousands it would likely cost to defend your patent in court? Did the flat rate cover him actually reading the patent to determine if it's overbroad or worse, not broad enough? There seems to be alot to think about with a patent, especially if you don't have in house counsel at your disposal. This is a pretty glib way to think about it, putting patents in the category of those nice things that protect big business but are out of reach of the little guys.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
IANAL, but I predict that the comments in this article will lure lots of porn lurkers from Google.
"Derp de derp."
Buy a copy of Patent it yourself, by Nolo press, eg at Amazon. It is a VERY good text on how to go through the patent process, both with and without a lawyer.
Test your net with Netalyzr
If you are worried about the cost to file the patent, why on earth are you bothering? With the exception of your resume, having a patent will be absolutely valuless to you unless you are willing to pay your lawyers to sue someone infringing on your patent.
If you don't have the money to file, you don't have the money to defend your patent.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
On the other hand, not everyone has the right skills and mindset to search for prior art well, which is important.
Similarly he says (and I sure believe) that it is very important to write your patent very very clearly, and to have very clear diagrams, because if the patent is ever contested, you want to be able to convince a non-technical jury as easily as possible.
That kind of clarity of writing and creating diagrams is not all that common, so using professional help might be in order.
Then again, not all professionals are all that great at clarity, either! Many patents' writing suck, IMHO.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
If its primary purpose is to decorate the wall of your den and impress people at Superbowl parties, then by all means, do it yourself. If you actually intend to base a company around the technology covered by the patent, then you're deluding yourself if you try to draft and prosecute the patent yourself. I can tell you, as a former patent examiner and as a practicing patent attorney, it's a very few lucky inventors (or those who have had lots of involvement in the patenting process at the corporate level) who get any type of claim coverage worth having.
In fact, there are so many potential pitfalls and minefields, the Patent Office will generally recommend that you get an attorney or agent once they realize that you're pro se (doing it yourself). It's just too easy to draft a specification that is nonenabling (in which case you've wasted your filing fee), to draft claims that are too narrow or exclude the commercial embodiment of the invention, or narrow the claims during prosecution in a way that creates an estoppel (stops you from claiming that someone who makes insubstantial changes to his device to avoid you claims nevertheless is an infringer).
Try working with smaller firms, and look for firms that use patent agents, rather than attorneys. These are people who have passed the exam qualifying them to prosecute patent applications, but generally are paid less (and billed out for less per hour) than attorneys. Then let an attorney do the actual prosecution, since they tend to be more familiar with issues that relate to litigation, like file history estoppel, etc.
done that.
Looking back On my experience I say, just fill out the paperwork, and file for yourself.
For an individual, it is only a few hundred bucks. If it is in conflict, they will send you a notice and you can find out what patent caused it to fail, then make relevent changes yourself. I believe you get 2 tryies after the original for free.
This is on there web stie, and since filling will cost you as much, if not less, then having an attorney do the search, why use them?
as you probably know, all the filling is coded.
for example, all diary products would have a designation, for this example lets say it 11.
then all isc cream product will have a a designation, let say 22.
so if you were looking for an ice cream product, you would look under 1122xxx
I'm not sure og the actual designation, this was only an example.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This actually doesnt work, but cant hurt. It is a myth used for movie scripts. One of the best ways to start is to get a bound notebook and start writing everything down in ink, NOT pencil. Cut and paste (literally) other pertinent info, and have the bottoms of each page signed by 2 people who arent family, but are fairly knowledgable about what they're witnessing... dates are important too. Lots more stuff... but I dont rememeber. Hope that helps.
Oleg
There are so many little getchas in the process, and knowing the langauge and how to dot the i's and cross the t's is extremely important, if you want to have a robust patent.
Additionally, while you can use the patent search systems to see about patents that are issued - patent lawyers have their own mechanisms and can often do a much better job of the process.
Remember, this is about protecting your intellectual property and idea - you don't want to have a mistake or it will possible be thrown out or challenged (which can be very very costly). If you spend a bit more money upfront to get the job done correctly, and then something happens, you have additional fall-back to pursue.
All patent attorneys I have ever dealt with have always told us what they wanted in the way of write-ups, which we provide. Then they came back to us with EXTREMELY DETAILED questions. It's quite extrodinary to see a non-technical person do it - but they do. And I think that's the point... because the patent process is LESS about what your patenting and MORE about making sure it's patented CORRECTLY. So they seek definitions, and they use those definitions to ensure that your unique, and if your not unique, they get you to redefine it until you are. A pretty valuable service if you ask me.
Remember too, it's all about the CLAIMS. And every patent I've ever read are VERY VERY difficult to read and understand. Usually patents take many readings, and pouring over the claims to understand what they mean in relation to each other. I seriously doubt if you have the ability to read the claims in the same way a patent attorney does - since it's in their language, not yours (unless your a lawyer ;).
One final thought... because you are the inventor I submit to you that you are too close to your invention to be impartial about what it takes to describe your invention properly so that it is protected. What you would tend to fluff off as not be competiting or infringing, others may differ with you. It should be invaluable to you to have a professional second opinion from someone who knows how to do it.
And don't go for the cheapest one you can find either ;)
Aloha
A patent lawyer gave a speech in a undergrad class of mine all those years ago...
The stated that the difficult thing about getting a patent approved is getting the language of the application correct.
The USPTO is expecting certain language, format, and degree of description in an application. If the application does not meet their requirements, they will reject it, and ask that you rewrite and resubmit it.
The benefit of patent lawyers is that they understand how to create patent applications, while the rest of us apparently really really suck at it. With a lawyer you can get the patent approved the first go around, instead of wasting months a years trying to write it yourself.
So you need to decide, is getting the patent done quickly and efficently worth 6Gs? Or do you want to risk spending years rewriting your application, and find that someone else gets the patent in the meantime?
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Maybe a little bit off-topic, but is there some way to "protect" an idea from being patented other than a patent? I mean like a GPL for patents (yes, I know copyright and patents are quite different). I might come up with something I think is a good idea but want all people to be able to use it for their own needs without restricting others. Again, something like the GPL for copyrights.
/. but I was too lazy to search for it, sorry...)
(I suspect this has been asked before at
And the answer is that there is no answer. If you are idea is good you want worldwide coverage since US coverage will simply force somebody to move offshore. However, if you end up staying solely on US soil you have to fork over the money. The problem of not doing that is that you will get a poorly worded patent.
Consider it as follows. Would you actually let a lawyer write your code for you? Not at all since a lawyer does not understand code and you do not understand lawyer speak.
That is why patent reform (eradication) is necessary. Patents only serve to protect those with money and not who should have coverage namely small time inventors.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
If you don't want to spend the money to get a patent, I have to wonder if you plan to make any money from it. Is this a Patent Granted on Sideways Swinging sort thing?
That is a decades-old urban legend (check with absolutely any lawyer, intellectual property book/website etc).
E.g. a quick search finds this on the subject: cbsnews.com
Moderators please mod that down (it's currently at 3, informative) for disseminating harmful misinformation.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
1) Write it down. Date it. Sign it.
2) File a preliminary patent application. It's only $60 apx? Beware that whe nyour patent issues this preliminary patent can be viewed by the public. 3) Have two people you trust AND who will understand it read it and sign & date the document
4) Existing patent are a good thing. Yu will need to demonstrate to the PTO that you idea is close, but not the same. Do not hide any prior art or close to prior art. The reason is that should these other patent holders see your work they will say, "hey, this looks close we'd better go after them." If you patent lists these their patent you can say, "hey, the PTO looked at you patents and said they are different." The more "close, but no cigar" that you can find the better.
5) Go ahead and do the leg work. Look at patents from IBM, etc for good examples, but beware even IBM files some stinkers. Even write it. Remember you pay by the claim.
6) At least pay for a couple of hours of a patent lawer's time to "proof-read it." You shouold be able to find a solo patent lawer who will be flexable.
7) Are you sure that you need a patent?
heh..your being a future lawyer does make your post irrelevent, as a future chef i could say 'don't cook yourself, always eat out' and sure that might be sound advice fore the realization that home cooking is some of the best and the only true way to connect with your food. By scratching the backs of your fellow lawyers, you irrelevate your own point.
Pras
Sometimes, you can, you go to hell for the rest of your life! That's a true thing.
I was just going over this with a coworker... I'd suggest filing a provisional application to claim priority and protect your ownership rights, but then try to find someone with deeper pockets to follow it up with a formal application though a patent lawyer. Like others I advise against DIY unless you alread have some experience with the process as there are lots of little gotchas.
Unlike a "real" application there are no formal requirements for text or drawings for provisional applications except that they ultimately fit in an 8.5x11. All you need is a cover sheet and an $80 fee if you do it yourself.
Here are a few decent links:
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa061701 a.htm
http://www.bpmlegal.com/provapp.htmlThis one is also pretty decent and a bit more DIY info http://www.frompatenttoprofit.com/provisional_pate nt_aps.htm
Finally, the software mentioned there seems useful... http://www.patentwizard.com/ and so are their FAQs http://www.patentwizard.com/htmls/support.htm, but if you were to go that route, you'd be out $580 for the software, filing and a flat fee review by their attorneys.
Various universities have invention disclosure forms posted on the www (see e.g. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe =UTF-8&q=invention.disclosure.forms) That ask all the right questions. Look at some of these and adapt them for your needs, this will drive you to pout all the information together in the right form and send it to the PTO with the cover sheet and your $80.
Balam
we typically have BS degrees in Eng, CS, Phy, Chem, and Bio.
In fact, you cannot even take the patent bar without a tech degree....
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
The cover image
Test your net with Netalyzr
Someone ought to mod this up -- this is what companies do with lab notebooks to deal with patent work, because not only do you have to show that it's novel, you have a certain time frame in which you need to do the work [it can also stand up in court as to who actually has done the work first]
In most places I've worked, it's also common practice to do work on only one side of the page, fill each page as much as possible, and date anything that is cut and pasted in before it is signed.
David Pressman's book Patent It Yourself has proved a pretty good step-by-step reference for doing this. It's only forty bucks, a heck of a lot less than what you would have to give to some leech^H^H^H^Hawyer.
Before you turn over your invention to unicron, you should definitely have your lawyer write a non-disclosure agreement. If you disclose your invention to the general public, you quickly become ineligible for a patent in the United States. Only something that's currently a trade secret can be patented.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Generally, the PTO's database is fairly difficult to search from the outside. While I work on the Trademark side of the Office, I can't imagine the Patent searching of the Office's database is easier.
Additionally, (most) attorneys know the language the PTO is looking for, as well as how to word your initial claim so that it is broad enough to cover everything. You don't have the experience to do that. It would be akin to asking a typist to set-up your network.
The USPTO makes it quite easy to file a patent or a trademark on-line for the average citizen (a pro se applicant). It is part of the Office's "strategic plan". However, I can tell you that the law for both patents and trademarks is full of little rules and requirements. Well over half of the applications I see on the Trademark side end up being abandoned 6 months later. I'd estimate that at least 80% of the pro se filed applications wind up abandoned for one reason or another. Unfortunately many of those end up abandoning because the applicant gets a long Office Action (i.e., a letter) from an examiner that has some fairly simple requirements that sound complicated becauase of the poorly worded form paragraphs the Office uses and the myriad of statutes that are cited.
At the same time, it never hurts to file and see what happens. The filing fees are a little steep, but if your basic searching has looked good, then maybe it will only require a little bit of phenagling to get it through. Chances are you will not get an allowance straight off the bat... it rarely happens on the Trademark side. I can only guess that it happens even less on the Patent side due to the complexities of the application.
Of course, being an attorney and one who works at the Office, I have to recommend that you get a patent attorney. 3 to 6,000 bucks is on the cheap side compared to what I've heard (over 10,000 bucks for a patent filing). But, one tip if you do file is that the USPTO's response time is generally six (6) months. There are exceptions so check the rules (Statute, CFR (Code of Federal Regulations), and MPEP (Manual of Patent Examining Procedure)... all available at the Office's website). If your application abandons, the fees to revive it are very high on the patent side (1,000 bucks). That's peanuts to a company like Dow or Microsoft, but a lot of beans for a solo inventor.
Finally, if you file yourself and it ends up looking good, but you get stuck, you can always go to an attorney at that point (That happens a lot, at least on the Trademark side... again, can't imagine it is much different on the patent side). Again though, I gotta recommend that you get an attorney... sorry if I sound like an attorney, but, well... I am one!
Good luck! Hope it works out for ya!
-A
Do you expect a real pot of gold at the end of this rainbow?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Then you'd spend the rest of your days fighting their Legion O' Lawyers® while they (Bill and friends) roll around naked in the all the money they made off your idea
This was discussed recently in one of my senior level EE classes. If a little guy has a patent on something, large corporations such as TI will often just not care about it because they know that enforcing a patent against their legal team is pretty much impossible for an individual to do. Sure, they may offer $50000 or so to buy the patent, but if they decide not to offer this money, the patent holder is SOL.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
1) It's not worth doing a patent search. Most of the larger companies do not. If you've done a perfunctory search and it's not obviously covered by prior art, then go for it! Worst case, the patent office tells you about some prior art & you adjust your application to take it into account (this almost always happens anyway).
2) It's hard, but very possible, to do it yourself. Read a lot. Look at other patents. See how it's done. If you value your time highly, you won't save money (since it's so time consuming to do right), but it's interesting and fun--plus, if you're student/unemployed/etc, you might not value your time so highly & it could be worthwhile. Also FYI, the patent office *likes* indpendant filers (by all reports), and will go out of their way to help you.
3) Think hard about why you want a patent. Patents are useful if you're going to sell an idea, but most companies won't look at patented ideas (lest you claim later that they copied you). Patents are useful for protecting a new business, but that assumes that there's no other good way of accomplishing the thing your invention accomplishes. And patents are good resume fodder. If none of these apply, you might not want/need a patent and you can save yourself some effort.
4) Patent applications are almost always rejected the first time around. Don't sweat it, it's just part of the process.
5) Even if you do hire an attorney, doing your homework & writing it up well will save you money. Show him what you've got on your first visit to the office so you can get an professional opinion, and if it's in good shape, that's less hours you need to be billed. $200/hour attorneys are happy to transcribe your napkins for you, but it's usually more cost effective to do it yourself.
6) It always takes a long, long, long time. The first patent I filed for, 5 years ago, is just now about to be issued. 3 years is very typical. 7) DON'T pay for anything other than a licensed patent attorney to file your patent. "Invention Submission Bureaus" and their ilk are just there to take your fees.
8) If you can't monetize your patent yourself, it's almost worthless. The only other thing you could do is sit on it for years, then sue someone who accidently infringes on it (so-called "Submarining"), and that's just wrong (to my way of thinking). Use a patent to protect a business, but don't expect to build a business on a patent. Hope this helps. Good luck! --dan
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
I think that [the postal "notary"] is/was a valid form of copyright that many aspiring musicians use.
Nowadays, copyright protects both unpublished and published inventions for life + n years. (Currently n = 70 in the United States and the European Union and 50 in the rest of the Berne Convention world, but most Slashdot readers who have replied to my comments believe that life plus 70 is much too long, and there are efforts in the U.S. court system to change the term.) If you register a copyright with the Library of Congress, you get more power against alleged infringers.
However, no copyright registration can save you from the fact that some publisher is going to sue you, claiming that the song you think is original is actually "substantially similar" to an existing copyrighted musical work. U.S. federal courts have found substantial similarity in four notes. And even if they lose, the cost of legal representation has bankrupted you.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
home cooking is some of the best and the only true way to connect with your food
Tell that to the pumpkin I connected with last night. Or the liver last week.
In the US, you have up to 1 year from date of first disclosure to when you can file for the patent. In other countries, Japan and the EU most notably, the second you disclose it publically it is impossible to patent it.
It doesn't take a formal non-disclosure agreement, but you do have to include a cover page explaining that it is confidential for review purposes only, etc, if you ever disclose it.
Of course, the best idea, especially considering that IANAL, is to just keep it secret, or clear any disclosures with a lawyer. And in general I really do reccomend a lawyer - although you can patent it yourself, there are enough reasons to get a lawyer to really make up for the few thousand you have to spend on one.
-Alison
The simplest argument is that patents do not only prevent, as you say, "a company, or companies, just steal it from you, while you (the inventor) get nothing." If that is all patents did, there would be little objection.
But a patent also restricts anyone who later independently comes up with the same idea. If you invent and patent left-handed widgets and I, without knowing, also invent and start selling left-handed widgets, I'm fucked. If I sell a left-handed widget, even without knowing that anyone has patented left-handed widgets, I'm fucked.
Patent law will have some hope when independent re-invention is an absolute defense. Until then, it's just a way for people to claim ownership of ideas and deny others' the use of their own brains.
Think about it: Do you know that nothing you have built, no line of code you have written, has ever been patented by someone else? Do you know for a fact that nothing you've invented, no line of code you have written, does something that anyone else has ever done and considered important enough to sic a lawyer on? Because if you don't know that, you are walking through a legal minefield. Patents, like landmines, should be kept out of places where they might make trouble for those of us trying to get things done.
--G
This works for copyrighting a literary work such as a poem or essay, but not for patenting an idea.
Sorry, you're wrong. It would never (and never has) stand the test of the law.
You can either file for the patent yourself or
hire a lawyer. If you file yourself, buy a Nolo
book and go. However, the trick with patents is
not writing the bulk of it, but rather formulating
the claims such that they would be difficult to
circumvent. For this you might need a lawyer.
If you do get a lawyer, remember that "filing" for
a patent is only a part of it. You also need to
file disclosure documents, i.e. what you know
about prior art, and you also need a lawyer for
the stage known as prosecution, i.e. for
responding to office actions. Make sure your
contract with your lawyer addresses these stages
and seek another lawyer to review your contract
with the first one. The price of $3,000 seems
cheap but if your patent is simple and you are
not in a major metropolitan area then maybe.
$5,000-6,000 is more realistic for a simple
patent. When I got my first patent, I thought
some lawyers would work on contingency but they
don't, not decent ones anyway.
better that pumpkin is honored by you knowing that you were eating it than you not knowing what was going on.
Would you rather be killed by some passing car, not even noticing you, or someone who admires you and actually GAINS from your death and appreciates you and your life.
THAT is what connecting with your food means, it means you recognize its life and its worth and you thank it for its sacrifice, whether it was its own choice or not.
(offtopic i know.)
Pras
Sometimes, you can, you go to hell for the rest of your life! That's a true thing.
It's not going to help. Especially when you walk into court to establish who invented something first, and get laughed out by both the judge and the opposing attorney.
A better solution is to keep a lab notebook, and have copies of its pages regularly reviewed, signed, and dated by either a notary or your attorney (some patent attorneys will do this for a very nominal fee. An even better solution is to publish your material (like in a trade journal, etc.) - in the US you get 1 year from date of publication to file a patent, although publishing DOES torpedo your ability to file foreign patenets in many cases (since they don't allow that 1 year leeway.)
As far as "poor man's copyright" is concerned, there's absolutely NO reason to resort to those kinds of measures, as all material is automatically copyrighted the instant it's fixed into a medium. What many people don't know is that you really can't claim damages UNTIL YOU REGISTER WITH THE COPYRIGHT OFFICE. Thus, mailing shit to yourself does absolutely NO GOOD AT ALL. If you're one of those paranoid script writers, you can send a copy of your script to be registered with the Writer's Guild for a small fee, which gives you some protection, in the event you believe you've been ripped off.
As always, I'm not a lawyer, so any advice I give you (indeed, any advice ANYONE who is not an attorney gives you) should NOT be construed as legal advice. Go talk to a lawyer, from my experience, the good ones will give you a half hour free to get the stupid questions off your chest, before charging you for doing any real thinking. That should be enough to give you a sense of what your options are, and the things you need to do to protect yourself.
The answer is YES... provided there is no "prior art" or it wasn't around before.
Think of windows, macintosh, linux, os/2 and what not. Xerox essentially developed much of what is a GUI, It would be quite easy to proove who did it, however Microsoft and Apple did not invent the GUI so they couldn't patent it and sue each other over it, and Xerox gave it away...
Xerox could have patented it (did they?) and enforced the patent or sold the idea or what, but they didn't - but they could have.
same thing with steering wheels in cars
you can't patent whiskey now or copyright its name because it already exists. But if it didn't, you could have.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
I was referring to a more physical form of the word connected. *cough*
And what is this supposed to prove? That you sent an envelope to yourself, and had it postmarked? Please...
I can see it now - you walk into court and throw a sealed envelope on to the Judge's bench. "Your honor, this is PROOF that I invented the X-widget on this date." All the opposing attorney has to do is bring up chain of custody. The money you'd spend proving that the envelope was indeed sent on that date, and had not been tampered with, would have easily paid for a notary to make a copy of your orignal notes way back when, and sign and date them.
There are reasons why they teach you to keep lab notebooks, and reasons why you should keep others appraised about what you've been doing and when. And there are reasons why you should go consult a qualified IP attorney, rather than soliciting layman opinions on a forum like Slashdot!!! And NO, I'm not a lawyer, so the above should NOT be considered legal advice.
Then a good patent attorney should provide more than the formating and submission of your patent. I have been granted several patents and have several pending. I've worked with several patent attorneys.
Today, patents are pretty easy to get. Just look at all the fuss that is raised every time someone get a software or business model patented that looks obvious to most of the SlashDot readers. That should tell you a little something about the state of patent examination today. I belive that because of that, it's easy to get a patent, but much more difficult to have a defensible patent granted.
By defensible, I mean if someone claims either prior art, after the patent has been granted or you try to enforce your rights as a patent holder against someone who is infringing. The civil litigation in cases such as these are before a jury of our peers. Not our technical peers, but the ordinary, not necessarily technical folk who inhabit our society. A patent needs to be written in such a way that it is easily understandable to this jury and the presiding judge. I believe a good patent attorney can greatly assist in writing a patent in such a way that it is understandable to lay people who may ultimately decide its fate.
Additionally, there are many rules and arcana surrounding how a patent is written, the details of the legalese used and many other conventions that, as far as I know, are not really written down. Failing these small items can cause your patent to be rejected by the patent office on non-technical ground.
That said, there are several reasons why one wants to patent an idea. You might just want to have a patent (it's cool!). The idea might be truly revolutionary and worthwhile in a business sense. You might want to patent additional small changes to build a patent fence around an existing strong patent. Each one of these has various costs associated with them.
I view submitting patent applications as a business decision. There are many costs involved. Not the least being my own time to write and review the patent application, even with the patent attorney. The second cost is the cost of the patent attorney and the third cost is the cost of the patent application itsself. This final fee goes to the USPTO. There are additional fees when applying for international patents.
In closing, if your idea is a good idea from a business point of view, meaning there is monetary value in having the patent granted, then the cost of having a good patent attorney should be a good investment.
-tpg
[disclaimer- I am not an attorney, nor do I play one. I just use them when I need their expertise.]
I wouldn't claim that anybody at the Office is "your friend", but MOST examiners I know on either the patent or trademark side are willing to help a pro se a little bit. But asking for a little help is like anything else... don't abuse it!!!
Yeah, examiners on either side have a quota, but neither side rewards an examiner for denying applications. That's BS. The "quota" system is calculated by first actions and "final" actions whether that final is an allowance, an abandonment or a final Office Action.
Additionally, there is no "free" law degree for working at the Office. On the Patent side, you can work at the Office without a law degree and without having passed the patent bar. The "perk" of working at the Office is that after a couple of years you can waive into the patent bar without taking the patent exam (by all accounts, an exam that is harder than any regular bar exam). If you end up getting an examiner who is not an attorney, then you are probably lucky, because the attorneys on the patent side that I know routinely complain about the non-attorney examiners who ignore the law. To me, that would generally be a benefit.
Mostly, I'd say the Office is just like any other government agency or company... you get people who care and people who don't... you may get an examiner who "ruthlessly slam dunks" applications, but it is not the majority of them, even come end of the quarter.
-APublish your material. Publish it as widely as possible. If the morons who patent your implementation/idea don't do a lit search, and then get their patent invalidated, then that's their own damn problem.
Umm.. That only works for COPYRIGHT.
With copyright, if you mail yourself, via Registered Mail, an envelope-sealed (can't use tape - what if it's an old envelope and a new text?) master copy, you can establish a date of existance and then be able to sue those that violate your copyright without having to do anything else.
With patents, prior art requires much more than that. An envelope sealed away doesn't count because to count as prior art, typically the application or product must be public in the sense that it is available to some group capable of acquiring the product.
Example. I make Guilty Widgets, and make them for the purpose of fulfilling some government contract, and my GW's are new products with potential uses that I can't see but could revolutionize Cog manipulation. I don't patent it, but it is mentioned in a maintenance manual for the Armed Forces Joint Strike Attack Bomber's Anti-Pixelization and Pizza Delivery System. (Don't ask. It works. Instead of making a lot of dust when things go boom.. you get the picture.)
Now, 2Lt. Charles "Hind-Leg" Williams, an expert pilot but disqualified from military aviation due to an odd congenital birth defect, is reading through these manuals and, lo and behold, comes across my GW and sees the potential for cog manipulation. If he steals my idea nearly verbatim and patents it, I can claim prior art on it because I have the profound mountain of evidence that shown I made the GW's before he did.
Example 2. I make The Burger Flipper. It's two pans stacked on top of each other so I don't have to use a spatula because I'm a lazy bastard. While I've got the envelope with the idea in my basement collecting dust alongside my Pet Thong and the Lava Hoop, I watch a Sci-Fi marathon of The Thing and see soemthing oddly like my burger flipper advertized for the low low price of three easy payments of $19.99. But wait, they include a batter pourer and a book of recipes that was won off eBay for no extra charge.. and if I call in the next ten minutes they'll cut off one inch from my waist with DextDiet ZQ. If I try to claim prior art, the judge will laugh in my face because there was no way that the other guys could have seen my idea.
btw: IANALBIWL2P1OTV.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
What, like what watch a dozen tv documentaries on volcanoes and space stations and cool physics stuff like that? ...hmmm, maybe I'll take a look :-)
This is Don Lancaster's (author of Incredible Secret Money Machine) take on patents. He's a unique character, and sometimes off-the-mark, but you should consider carefully before rejecting his advice.
He estimates the breakeven point for a patent is over 12 million in gross sales. His catch phrase is that it is useless to patent a mere million dollar idea.
Give them a call. See if they tried to patent or copywright the Munchkins in any way.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Without a doubt the best guide to patenting without an attorney is the Nolo Press book by Pressman, Patent It Yourself, and it's attendent apparatus.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I worked previously in the USPTO and examined software inventions before the USPTO officially admitted it gave patents for software.
... they were in the games field - like frisbees and such. He was really out of his water in our area. I had to object to his claims (problems in wording and format) and reject them (there was prior art). This case was especially sad because the guy was disabled and could not afford a telephone - I might have been able to help him if we had talked. He was also a bit insulting at times to the examiners (If you go pro se, I recommend you don't do this - it has an unofficial detrimental effect on patentability of your invention). The situation was complicated as another firm had a patent on the invention although this guy had likely invented it earlier. During the prosecution of the application, he sent in some copyright documents to prove that he invented it earlier. That was a bad move as the documents predated his patent application by over a year. I had no choice - I had to reject him over his own publications.
I only saw one pro se (by one's self) application. The inventor had already gotten around 35 patents pro se. But
That said, if you can do it - it will save alot of money. Also, you will have the satisfaction of crafting your patent. However, no offense, but I gather from your post that you would be better off having some help. The many other posts mentioning the difficulty of the language, the strategy in the claims, the writing style, and so on are correct - it is an arcane profession which takes time (years) to learn satisfactorily.
Regarding the prices you quoted - $450 for a search and up to $6,000 for the application (finished and filed, I assume) - these seem on point, even rather low by the standards I am familiar with.
I would suggest you try and see the quality of the work of the lawyers you checked with - go to the USPTO full text patent search page and enter the query "lrep/xxx" where xxx is the attorney's firm name or personal name. You have to play around, especially with personal names. For example, if the attorney is named Joe P. Waller, the patent will list him as "Waller; Joe P." (with the ";"), but the "P" might be left out or he might use Joseph, etc. Find a patent or two and read them for technological competency, claim completeness, etc.
As a start, a search is good to ensure that your invention was not already patented. If your invention was already patented - then you will save alot of money and time which would be lost otherwise. Furthermore, you can learn to do your own searching. I worked for a searhing firm for a while. They took all kinds of people (with degrees, without degrees, etc.) and had them producing searches for paying clients by the second or third day. I did see alot of shenanigans going on - but you get the idea that searching isn't too difficult to pick up.
Somewhat offtopic - the USPTO has a large public search room in Crystal City, VA (near the pentagon, somewhat). If your work is such that you will be patenting things now and again, then the search room is worth a visit just to see it. It has 100s of feet of narrow (3') corridors lined on each side floor to ceiling with metal bins holding paper patent copies. It is a strange sight - and one which is soon to disapear as the USPTO is trying to destroy the paper copies and go completely electronic. I believe the EFF or ACLU has filed a suit against the USPTO asking for an injunction that the patents not be destroyed until the electronic search engine is working better.
I remember seeing something about open software patenting in old Slashdot posts - someone offered to provide services in searching and writing - maybe two or three years ago? I emailed the poster at the time and offered my services, but never heard back. I am curious whether Slashdot reading practitioners would be willing to help out. Too bad we couldn't have open source patent drafting - working together to protect open source inventions. But for reasons relating to competition and confidentiality, this wouldn't work.
Good luck, let us know what you decide.
I agree. A postmark alone doesn't cut it for copyright.
It must be sent registered mail in an envelope which has been sealed by the envelope only, not by tape.
This technique works and has been tested in court successfully. I personally know people who have written plays, protected their works thusly, had characters which were pretty similar to ones they've written created by others, the original playwrights sued in federal court and won based off the evidence of the sealed script.
This works because it provides a legally acceptable date which can be verified with the USPS (registered mail IS recorded by the post, of course). After all, tax returns are considered by the day of the postmark..
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
The first question is, how good is your idea? Does it solve a problem that people need solved? What's your next step after the patent is filed? Is it time to head out to 3000 Sand Hill Road and talk to the venture capitalists, or are you thinking of writing letters to manufacturers in hopes of a reply? Is there a business in this? How big a business? Can you get a piece of that business?
My patents are in areas where others had tried and failed to solve some problem, and there existed literature (and failed products) to demonstrate this. If you have something like that, getting a patent is relatively easy, and it's likely to be worth something.
Patenting your "idea" is easy, but probably pointless. I always had to bring things up to the point where I had a shrinkwrapped product before money came in. (In some cases, the shrinkwrapping was done at a local copy shop. But the box looked good. And the software inside worked.) A killer demo may be sufficient for some ideas. But an untried paper idea has to be really, really good to be worth anything.
Get and read the Nolo books. Even if you're going to use a lawyer, you need to understand the patent process thoroughly.
Find a lawyer you get along with. They have to understand what you've done. Here in Silicon Valley, there are plenty of patent lawyers, and legal business is slow right now. Get a price quote for the whole job before you start.
If you can't write well, it's going to cost you more. I always write my own specifications and let the lawyer review them. The lawyer writes the claims, which I then review. Claim drafting is a technical subject, but you need to understand it well enough to comprehend what is and isn't infringement.
Find out what word processing software your patent attorney uses. You're going to be sending documents back and forth, and you need compatibility. This also applies to drawings.
Forget "invention brokers". The whole "invention broker" industry is a scam. In Silicon Valley, where almost anybody who's any good technically has a patent or two, there are no invention brokers. Now that invention brokers are required by Federal law to disclose their success rates (which are around 0.01%) up front, that scam is dying.
On the other hand, it probably took me a couple hundred of hours to do the research. By the time I was done, I'd spent enough evenings in the courthouse law library that some of the security guards thought that I was a lawyer.
A lot of the time I spent was understanding the basic rules of court. Now that I have a reasonable understanding of that, I'd be willing to go into court again, if I had to, but it's definitely easier to hire a lawyer to do things, if you have the money.
On the other hand, having watched lawyers in action (and lawyers who apparently had a really good reputation in lawyer circles!), you'd be surprised how limited their logic facilities can seem to be sometimes. Even if you hire lawyers, it wouldn't hurt you to do a quick sanity check on their work.
You're hiring them, and they're nominally acting under your instructions. Don't be afraid to ask questions and make requests. It can save you money and trouble down the road
(btw: Legalese is essentially a natural-language programming language)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Just file your patent. Worry about prior art and all that other stuff later. That's what everybody else does...
Can't you people read? He's patenting little people. Then he's gonna sue the crap out of that guy on the Lucky Charms box and get his pot of gold.
At best, such self-registration might help you defensively. -- if someone claims that it was their idea and you stole it. Getting it notarized, however, seems like a much better idea, since the notary will place a seal and date directly on the document itself. If in doubt, also leave a copy with the notary.
Registration with the library of comgress is most foolproof since they're provably neutral in any dispute -- and they're the official registrar for copyrights.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I filed my get-rich-fast patent application last year while I was in between jobs. I am still waiting. I too debated between hiring a lawyer and doing it myself. I ended up doing it myself. Here was my logic.
First of all, I did a quick search (about 2 weeks) and did find similar inventions. So I used them as my templates. I read and followed "Patent it Youself" because my brother previously had successfully gotten a patent by following it.
Secondly, my invention could only succeed with the partnership (more like conspiracy) of several large corporations. So my goal was to license the patent. The idea that one patent attorney could protect me from the army of IP lawyers at several companies just didn't make much sense to me.
So I thought the best thing I could do was to get large corporations to fight each other. As I saw it, if my invention was not worth fighting over, then it would never create a monopoly, and never sell. It would be fun just to watch big guys fighting over my invention. Maybe I would become famous.
The bottom line was, if I couldn't get one big guy on my side, I would get nothing anyway. So at the end, I just filed the patent myself. I thought a framed patent would look nice on my wall. And I could afford the $350 filing fee.
These are from a guy who used to claim he designed the best selling IC of all time (the single chip AM/FM radio). He has at least 15 patents including a few he's not proud of. One of which is a one wire control system that uses morse code but thats not clear from the patent.
1st: The patent isn't worth the paper its printed on most of the time.
2nd: Write down every idea you have in a serial numbed book. Places that sell accounting books will have a books with red numbers printed on every page. Start each entry with a date and put a line below the entry. These can be helpful in court but only if there is no question that you alwasy use the same procedure and keep it neat.
3rd: A patent is worthless unless you have someone to assign it to. People get patents but can't do anything with them. The compaines they assign them to can.
4th: Getting your 1st patent is a great feeling. After that delusion sets in.
1) It's not worth doing a patent search. Most of the larger companies do not. If you've done a perfunctory search and it's not obviously covered by prior art, then go for it! Worst case, the patent office tells you about some prior art & you adjust your application to take it into account (this almost always happens anyway).
This advice is so bad that I almost don't know where to start. A competent prior art search is an essential first step to obtaining adequate patent coverage, and is a practical and relatively low-cost way to avoid investing in preparation and prosecution of a dead-end valueless patent.
Some people want to file for a patent solely to obtain the pretty deed-like certificate. To that end, perhaps the author's advices may be meaningful. The rest of us (meaning MOST of us) would invest in preparing a patent application solely for the hope of obtaining a grant of rights more valuable than the expenses. Without a competent search, you will lose on every front:
1) avoid claiming too broadly. If you claim too broadly, and then amend by substantially revising the claims, you lose all benefit of the doctrine of equivalents due to prosecution history estoppel;
2) avoid claiming too narrowly. You simply can't know how good or bad is your invention until you have done a novelty search. If you don't see what is really out there, you might not claim enough;
3) avoid filing negative value patents. A negative value patent is a patent that, even if obtained or obtainable, will never have commercial value exceeding the cost of obtaining the rights. $25,000 for a piece of waterfront property in Miami sounds like a great deal -- until you discovery that the property is only a square inch in area. Without a prior art search, you cannot responsibly evaluate or even estimate the commercial benefit or value of the invention. Guess too high or too low, and you have lost value.
The remark about large companies not performing searches is primarily false, and certainly misleading. Large companies with in-house patent counsel might not need to perform searches for general improvements to well-known technology, for the simple reason that these in-house lawyers are ALREADY experts on the relevant prior art. This is common, particularly in the arena of manufacturing entities, where it is not only practical, but frequently the case, that a good in-house lawyer may be aware of (and routinely keep up with) most of the relevant art. Other companies distinguish between "commodity" patents from real inventions, the former being primarily portfolio fodder to avoid third-party claims and to reserve opportunities for cross-licensing out of lawsuits. For these commodity patents, less investment is justified beyond a cursory search.
Few individuals have any use for vanity or commodity patents. Let your lawyer do a real search -- the failure to do so will cost you much down the road, one way or the other.
Trolling through the archives in Google Groups might well turn up some nuggets of wisdom amongst the dross...
If the patent is really worth defending, ie, if it had any merit in the first place, a lawyer would jump at the chance to do it on contingency- same as with any other lawsuit.
Depending on the nature of your idea, it might be cheaper, easier, and more effective to make use of copyright law instead of patent. Of course you can copyright code, which may or may not be of help. But you can also copyright a design, even in an engineering sense. Do some research on this, too. It's not only easier to establish, it's also easier to defend.
-m
Just take a copy to a notary and have the damned thing notarized. All this talk of mailing stuff to yourself is silly. It makes for interesting evidence, but it's hardly a legal principle on which to base the security of your work. How many ways are there to slip something into a 'sealed' envelope? What if it's David Copperfield, wanting to patent a new type of sword-through-girl-in-box stunt?
Evil is the money of root.
I remember learning about this one for literary material, and possibly software on a permanent media.
Put the story/software in a well-sealed envelope. have it mailed to yourself, date-stamped by the post-office. Never open the envelope unless your creation is challenged.
Of course in the majority of situations this won't hold its water in court. It does however provide low-case proof of the date you mailed yourself the plans/story/code, and thus when the idea came by you. If somebody else sues you for patent violation, you can then use I-came-first.
First time I heard this was before everyone became patent-lawsuit-crazy though. Other measures are definately recommended.
Maybe I should patent this, in case anyone uses it - phorm
Just by coincidence, I happened to be researching this very subject earlier today. The best informational site that I found during my brief search was here.
A good bit of advice is to file an $80 provisional patent. It will protect your idea for one year, long enough (hopefully) to start generating a profit. if all works out, you will then be able to afford the patent fees. Note also that for small inventors the fees are halved. it's about $370 for the initial filing, then $1k and change at the 3, 7.5, and 11.5 year marks, for a maintenence fee.
Let's twist it around for a moment. Suppose /. were a legal community, and a lawyer said "I've got a great idea for a program, but I don't want to pay one of those greedy programmers to do it." He might write his program, and maybe even well enough to have it work. But I wouldn't want to bet on it.
Personal feelings aside, lawyers have specialized knowledge that will help you through the process. I am in the middle of it myself. Particularly if you have to defend your application, you will likely want a lawyer.
Note that this is not a blanket endorsement. I went to five lawyers before selecting the one I am using. I did almost all of the searching myself. I met with our attorney (who has a Bachelor's in math and a PhD in Computer Science, for the record) several times to get the facts straight, and I edited the application. But I didn't write it. Patent lawyers make a living writing patents, and they know the ins and outs. Their expertise, IMHO, is worth the money.
-db
And here I thought someone had gone and patented Little People!! ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Legal stuff is very expensive in the USA. Take the "capitalist" route and look for the cheapest country for patent filing, that still allows you to invoke your right of priority in the USA.
After filing it in a cheaper country, try to commercialize your patent, look for people or companies to team up with.
When you have reason to believe that it'll earn you enough money, or when you get an advance, then file the patent in the USA, using your right of priority.
But don't let the period in which you have that right expire.. check a regular lawyer or other expert for details.
Erwin
What I would do and have done is to do my homework very thoroughly. Repeat your prior art search with wellthought out searches. Be very careful that you cover all relevant technical terms and beware that the terms used in patent documents can be very different from the terms used by people in your field. Write down the reasoning behind your searches on paper so that you and a patent attorney or examiner can understand that what you have done is correct. Put the time and effort into understanding patent classification systems. They are complicated but will help your search greatly. Identify aspects of your invention and classify them and search with terms and classes "diagonally", i.e. if your invention pertains to a razor mounted on a bicycle then search in the razor classes with the word bicycle and the other way around. Do this in both the USPTO and EPO systems (Espacenet).
Then you will end up with a pile of print-outs of patents that might or might not be relevant. Go through them one by one making sure that you understand them. For two reasons: Firstly, to find out if your invention is really new and what you actually invented. Secondly, because these patents are a good source of inspiration. You will discover new aspects of your invention that you will want to cover in your claims. You will also find out that there are patents that cannot be understood - period. I don't know what to do about them. Write a complete document to yourself and any patent people explaining why each of the existing patents are not in conflict with your invention. Remember to check in INPADOC what the status of the patents are if possible. Consider what discontinued applications can mean for your invention.
Now you have ammonition. Write up a set of draft claims modelled on the best and broadest of the patents you have read. Make sure that you realize that formulating claims is work for experts.
Write a detailed description of your invention covering every aspect that you can think of and that you have touched upon in your draft claims. Make the best drawings and the clearest text you can at all.
Clear your head for a week. Reread the text you have compiled and start negociating prices with patent people. Show them that you have done a lot of the tedious work for them and make sure that you get a significant discount.
I learned that just having the searches and then relevant patents printed out saved me a bundle. The attorney used Derwent to print out patents and that cost a part from time also $5 a patent. I had printed out the patents from the web for free from USPTO and Espacenet (+JPO). I cannot overemphasize the importance of doing a systematic search and documenting it. I decided to redo several days of work in a systematic fashion and got much more convincing results. Checking the references and examined documents in other patents is also very effective.
You can do a good job yourself but I would never trust myself to write the final claims myself.
virve
--
Big companies and little companies have different rules. Big companies have defensive patenting strategies. 70% of Canon's patents were largely to stake out new intellectual territory. Most of these patents are never used as individuals - the smallest unit of patents for these agreements is often the roomful, unless you are lucky enough to have one of the really key ones (and they are rare).
Small companies and individuals will rarely have enough clout to force a cross-licencing agreement with Intel. Often the best thing they can do with their invention is to get what legal protection they cheaply can, and then lie low, and not attract the attention of the big players. In which case sticking a notice of your invention on an indexed and cross-referenced database that anyone can search is the very last thing you want.
Don't be fooled by the costs of filing a patent. You have to pay to keep the things going, too. How deep are your pockets? Do you want to pay to maintain a badly drafted patent?
You should be able to protect your invention by a 'declaration of invention'. This is a sort of publishing, but it can be obscure as you like. That will at least reserve you the right to a free licence from anyone else who sucessfully files a subsequent patent to manufacture your invention in its present state.
Is your invention really obvious? Some people seem to think that a patent is an award for doping something really clever. Really clever bits of engineering or computing may be best protected by obscurity. A good patent is an award for doing something really obvious. Sony patented the Walkman - a battery cassette recorder but without a record head. Once you see one, you know how it works and why it is worth doing, and then the patent is really valuable to keep off the competition.
You might try using the copyright laws to protect your design. You can write your own copyright (though doing it in some way that lets you prove the date afterwards is obviously a good idea), and you can get 50 years protection, instead of only 17 from a patent.
Some of the big companies are going this way. The really smart option these days is to protect your idea using the trademark laws, which can cover 3-d objects such as the Coca-Cola bottle, or the Jif plastic lemon, and have even been used to cover a scent added to sewing thread. If you can make your printer cartridge a trademarked shape, then no-one will be able to make copies, and the protection on a used trademark never expires.
If, after all this, you still go for a patent, then try and find an agent who is skilled in the field to do the patent searches. There is much prior art that is never found in the digitally searchable archives. When I was trying to find prior art for a type of computer monitor, I could find no prior art on the database searches, but I happened to find an old book on colour TV technologies from the 1960s that listed the amazing lengths people went to to get around the RCA shadow mask patents, including my invention in every detail godammit, and several other variations that I thought too hopeless to be worth persuing.
There is another reason for getting someone else to do your search. It is very hard if you are proud of your idea, to to a good job of trying to knock it down: I know I always did a better job on other people's patents, try how I might.
Oh, and good luck...
"If I was able to see farther, it was because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." - Sir I.Newton.
You need prepaid legal services. Just make a $300 check out to cash, mail it to me and I'll get you signed up right away. ;-]
-
Look jackass, you can't take out a patent on midgets and nobody here thinks the idea is funny. Quit horsing around you insensitive jerks...
...
heh... :)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Under current US law, copyright exists as of creation of the item. Registration of the copyright is not required, but is a good idea if you can handle the paperwork and the money.
The registered envelope dealie works because it proves you created it and, thus HAVE the copyright on it.
And, seven dollars with a one-day turnaround is pretty good protection.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
No. That is utter nonsense. The envelope trick has no legal weight, period. Ask any IP attorney.
Think for a second. You can't come up with any other reason? No?
Then I have an urgent business matter to discuss with you. It must be held in strictest confidence. I am the nephew of a deposed Nigerian prince...