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Why do you apply for a patent?
(690 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to describe how you qualify for a patent and what qualifies for a patent. If it is an invention, if it is a new original invention that you have created, what is an invention? It is a creation of the human m...
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Do you need a patent attorney to file a patent?
(570 Clicks)
The question is: do you need a patent attorney to file patent application? The answer is no. Just as filing your yearly income tax return does not require an accountant, filing for your patent does not require an attorney. You c...
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How do you document your invention?
(492 Clicks)
In this section I am going to talk about how does one document their invention. One is a lab notebook. You basically write down your thoughts, disclose how someone could make and use your invention on the conception date or shortly the...
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How do you know if you have a great invention?
(483 Clicks)
How do you know if your idea will make a great invention? Or is your invention really great? The first thing you do is to search. Suppose you do the search or you are really familiar with the prior art and you know the market size is r...
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How do you make a great idea into an invention?
(387 Clicks)
What do you do if you have a great idea but you do not know how to make it? You have no idea how to make it because you do not have the technology background in that area, you are not an engineer. Well, that is okay. As long as you fu...
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How do you get started on your idea?
(418 Clicks)
So you have a great idea, you do not know how to get started, what do you do first? Well, the first thing you do is get mentally prepared to invent. Make sure that idea that you have is a real invention. Make sure you have thought thr...
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What makes a patent?
(346 Clicks)
In this section I am going to talk about what are the different elements of a patent. The different elements of a patent include the title of the patent, the name of the inventors, the serial number which is issued by the Patent Office ...
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What makes an invention new?
(354 Clicks)
For our purposes, novelty just means new. So how do you show the patent office that you have created something new? There are basically three ways this can be accomplished. One way is to show a physical difference from all...
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Who Grants Patents?
(301 Clicks)
Patents are granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The US Patent and Trademark Office is, in the United States, a national patent office. Most countries have either a national patent office or a regional patent office. The Eur...
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Are inventors creating a monopoly?
(317 Clicks)
Are inventors creating a monopoly through the patent system that is stopping the whole world from doing anything without licensing their patents? No, but people that invent and create want to make money from their ideas. There needs to...
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Are patents boring?
(283 Clicks)
The question I am going to answer for you right now is are patents boring. In my view, they certainly are not, but I will tell there are some that believe that they are so. Patents are very complicated legal documents. They are a hybr...
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Are you an inventor?
(333 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to tell you what is inventorship. Inventorship is an objective test. If someone materially contributes at least one concept of a patent application claim, then they should be and they must be listed as inven...
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Busting common Patent Myths
(373 Clicks)
I am going to discuss here what are some common patent myths. The first patent myth that I come across is that patents issue very quickly. That is not the case. It takes a long time, because it is a monopoly right and it is examined b...
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Can a Patent Owner lose rights to his patent?
(367 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to discuss whether a patent owner can lose their patent rights. The answer is yes. Certain things that happened during the time the patent application was still being processed, that now is a patent, create f...
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Can you patent software?
(375 Clicks)
The question is can you obtain a patent on your software-related technology? The answer is it depends. In the United States software technologies are patentable; inventive technologies if these have a technical character. So if it is ...
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Can you write to the United States Patent Office?
(271 Clicks)
Can you write to the USPTO after your application has been filed to ask them about status and have any questions answered? The answer to that is yes, you can. If you have an attorney, you generally probably should work through your att...
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Does a trademark relate to a Patent?
(361 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to discuss how a trademark relates to a patent. Trademarks protect brands and identities of a business. It could be slogan, a name like Nike: Just Do It. It could be the swoosh mark. It could be the logo f...
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Does it matter about the type of infringement?
(274 Clicks)
Not really, because you have constructive notice. If the patent is published, the law says you could have looked up that information. If you do it willfully or you do it intentionally, you may be subject to additional penalties. In par...
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How do you acquire joint ownership of a patent?
(317 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to talk about how inventors acquire or owners acquire joint ownership. They can acquire joint ownership through an agreement like an assignment from one party to the other, that one inventor assigns it to com...
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How do you collect your royalties?
(341 Clicks)
The question is how do you collect royalties from your invention? You collect royalties from your invention by enforcing your rights of the patent. If you have an issued patent, that is when you potentially collect royalties, you need ...
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How do you describe your drawing?
(382 Clicks)
In this section, we are going to identify one sentence that identifies your whole drawing. We are also going to identify everything that you have shown as to what you are showing and what it does. You want to indicate one sentence for ...
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How do you file an International Patent Application?
(329 Clicks)
The question here is how and when do you prepare an international PCT application. The goal is to file and prepare an international PCT application as soon as possible, because you do not want to wait until the last day. When is as soo...
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How do you find companies that pay you?
(322 Clicks)
The question is are there companies that will pay you for your ideas? That is a broad question. If you have an invention that is protected by patents, there maybe some companies that will buy the patent or buy the license to that paten...
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How do you Foreign File your patent application?
(270 Clicks)
I am going to talk about how one goes about with foreign filing. Foreign filing is a complicated procedure, but basically within one year of either the provisional application or the US full utility application, whichever is earlier - s...
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How do you prosecute a Design Patent Application?
(309 Clicks)
Here I am going to discuss how one prosecutes a design patent application. There are set rules the Patent Office has for filing and prosecuting a design patent application. Usually, there is just one simple claim with a drawing which i...
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How do you protect a trade secret?
(277 Clicks)
Perhaps you are familiar with a recent Coca-Cola advertising campaign in which the narrator alleges that there are only two men in existence who possess the secret formula to the popular beverage. As you might expect, one man ho...
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How do you stop patent infringement?
(324 Clicks)
With all of the hard work it took to obtain your patent, the presence of infringers will undoubtedly rattle your nerves. The thing to remember, though, is that a patent is not protection in and of itself, but rather it is a weap...
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How do you write an abstract for a patent?
(372 Clicks)
In this section, we are going to talk about the abstract and write your abstract. The abstract makes the cover page of an issued patent or a published application. It is often the first thing that people read. However, technically, it...
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How does one find a Foreign Patent Agent?
(266 Clicks)
The question is how does one locate foreign patent agents? There are number of directories that you can use to locate foreign patent agents. You could do a US PTO search or you could do a US Google search or Yahoo search to find them. ...
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How is a Patent Application abandoned?
(479 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to talk about when a case goes abandoned and what that means. A case goes abandoned when an applicant fails to respond to a pending issue of the Patent Office which might be an office action or restriction, a...
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How to defend against infringement of patents?
(240 Clicks)
In this section I am going to discuss what are defenses to patent infringement. Some defenses include invalidity of the patent. The patent is invalid because there is something wrong with it, there was a failure citing prior art or exam...
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How to do a prior art search?
(395 Clicks)
I am going to talk you about in this section how you do prior art search. You can do a prior art search a number of ways using online tools. The USPTO website allows you to search issued patents and pending applications that have been ...
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How to make a patent settlement out of court?
(264 Clicks)
Here I am going to discuss how one can settle patent disputes without going to court. First is to get a settlement negotiation with the other party. Because litigation is very expensive, settlement negotiations can be informal between t...
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How to respond to a Final Office Action?
(470 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to talk about how you respond to a Final Office Action. Generally, after Final Office Actions, you cannot make any substantive amendments to your claims. You can only change them to be in the form the Patent...
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How to revive an abandoned application?
(537 Clicks)
What does petition to revive an application mean? You can revive an abandoned application by submitting evidence that you did an unintentional abandonment or an unavoidable abandonment depending on your facts or your scenario. You did ...
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How to search for a good patent attorney?
(309 Clicks)
We are going to discuss what are some good ways of finding a good patent attorney. Some of the good ways of finding a good patent attorney is through word of mouth and referrals and also doing a patent search, seeing whether some of the...
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How to search for a patent?
(303 Clicks)
So I am going to talk about what you can do and how to search for a patent now. We have gotten beyond whether we search or not. But what is the best way to search? There are different things you can use to find the closest prior art to...
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How to stop others pursuing an abandoned application?
(263 Clicks)
If your abandoned application is published by the USPTO, it is within 18 months of the filing of your original application, then it is then prior art. All the things that you have disclosed are prior art against your invention. That wi...
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How to write a patent
(358 Clicks)
In the starting step, you are going to be doing two things. You are going to be selecting the patent field and you are going to be naming your file. Selecting the patent field means that you are going to be indicating what subject are...
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How to write a Summary for your utilty patent application?
(353 Clicks)
In this section we are going to talk about the summary and write the summary of your invention. The summary of the invention should mirror your independent claim. The independent claim that you just wrote that took your primary elemen...
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How to write claims?
(651 Clicks)
In this section, we are going to be writing claims. Claims are the legal aspects of this whole exercise and that is to define what your monopoly right is. Claims are limitations. The best claims are no words at all. We cannot use cla...
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Should you license or sell your patent?
(449 Clicks)
Everybody has heard stories that feature an inventor who unwittingly sold out for pennies an idea that would go on to make millions. In some of these cases, it is just really difficult to determine the economic potential of your...
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What are foreign patent treaties?
(247 Clicks)
In this question I am going to talk about what are the foreign patent treaties. The US is a member of a number of foreign patent treaties including the Paris Convention Treaty and the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Both are seeking to harm...
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What are the additional issues in patent prosecution?
(375 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to talk about additional issues that might arise during patent application prosecution. One issue is interference. When the patent office believes that there are one application and one patent that are claim...
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What are the consequences of infringement?
(255 Clicks)
If a court finds somebody has infringed upon your patent, the infringer may be required to pay a reasonable royalty for their use of your invention. In addition, the infringer may also have to pay past damages for the infringeme...
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What are the different kinds of Patents?
(341 Clicks)
Different kinds of patents exist in order to cover the different types of inventions one might want to maintain exclusive rights over. The three different kinds of patents are: utility patents, design patents and plant patents.<...
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What are the features of a Design Patent?
(280 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to talk about whether a design patent can be infringed. The answer is yes, if the novel features of the patented design are similar to something else that is already covered by design patent.
There ...
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What are the other factors?
(333 Clicks)
I am going to talk about secondary factors that can be used to challenge an obviousness rejection. Your primary goal, if you get an obviousness rejection of a patent application, is to really tell the examiner that the prior references ...
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What are the remedies to patent infringement?
(295 Clicks)
In this section, we are going to discuss what are some remedies for a patent infringement. There are several remedies available. One could be an injunction to stop someone from actually stop the infringer from practicing the patented c...
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What are the steps in a patent litigation?
(256 Clicks)
Generally, a patent litigation begins with cease and desist letters or an offer for license. The offer for license happens when the inventor is looking to stop someone else from using their claims or their invention and extends ...
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What are the steps to take to patent your invention?
(317 Clicks)
First, you do not need a prototype. You need to have fully thought through all the details. If you want to do a search, you can do that. The very first thing is you need to either talk with an attorney or think about these questions y...
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What are the two types of Claims?
(337 Clicks)
In this section I am going to talk about what are the elements of a claim. A claim is a single sentence. There are two kinds of claims: independent claims and dependent claims. Dependent claims take everything from the independent cla...
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What can be infringed in a patent?
(240 Clicks)
Generally, what could be infringed is the claims of the patent. The ownership's permission also can be infringed; not really infringed, but the ownership's permission to use or license the patent may not be received and therefore the cl...
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What do write a Background section of a patent application?
(336 Clicks)
In this section we are going to write the background of your invention. The background of your invention needs to be done very carefully. Backgrounds can be treated as admissions often when patents become valuable. So you want to make...
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What do you do when you cannot stop infringement?
(240 Clicks)
Sometimes another company may be infringing on your invention, but you cannot stop them because they are doing business entirely in a country – manufacturing, selling, distributing – where you do not have patent protection...
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What do you mean by an obvious invention?
(403 Clicks)
So the question I am going to answer here is how does the Patent Office determine whether something is non-obvious or not. The Patent Office determines whether something is non-obvious or not by putting itself in the position of someone...
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What documents are needed to apply for a patent?
(303 Clicks)
Here, I am going to talk about which documents that you should submit with the patent application. You should always submit an IDS which is an invention Disclosure Statement to the Patent Office which shows what are the known prior art ...
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What does a Patent pending mean?
(288 Clicks)
I am going to answer what it means when someone says their invention is patent pending or patent applied for. All this really means is that they have filed a patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office and it is pending i...
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What does detailed description mean?
(344 Clicks)
We have made it to the detailed description section. The detailed description section is basically a write up that supports your claims. Everything that you said in your claims should be in the detailed description and should be explai...
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What does it mean if your patent application is published?
(404 Clicks)
What does it mean when your patent application is published and publicly available? Most patent applications get published after 18 months. An applicant can request that their application not get published by filing a request of non-pu...
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What does it mean to infringe a Patent?
(280 Clicks)
What does it mean to infringe a patent? What it means is that when someone is infringing a patent, they are actually infringing claims of the patent. The claims of the patent have elements. Each element of that claim someone else is d...
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What does Patent Ownership mean?
(326 Clicks)
Here I am going to explain what patent ownership means. Patent ownership is the entity or person that owns the patent. At the time of filing, the ownership is the inventors themselves who materially contributed to this one claim. They ...
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What guarantee does a patent offer?
(284 Clicks)
Patents offer no guarantee. So that is the answer to this question: do patents offer a guarantee that you are going to be rich or your invention is going to sell or people are going to want to buy your product or whether your claims ar...
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What is a Claim's Priority Date?
(257 Clicks)
A claim's priority date and a patent application's priority date is the earliest disclosure of that concept ever in a printed form to the United States Patent Office or to the public. So it could be the filing date of the provisional pa...
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What is a Copyright?
(274 Clicks)
Although both protect ideas, there are several differences between a copyright and a patent. A copyright protects work of authorship that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression such as books, plays, or songs. Pa...
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What is a design patent?
(266 Clicks)
As with all patent worthy ideas, the invention must be new, original and non-obvious. Unlike other patents, a design patent requires that the invention be merely ornamental and impact only the aesthetics of a useful article of m...
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What is a First Office Action?
(317 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to talk about how one responds to a First Office Action. When you get a First Office Action, it mean it is the first substantive response from the patent office saying your claims are not allowable because of...
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What is a Foreign Filing Receipt?
(248 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to talk about the foreign filing receipts and when you can foreign file an application filed in the US. After filing an application in the US, usually the US Patent Office will give a blue slip which comes wi...
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What is a Joint Ownership Agreement?
(401 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to discuss what are joint ownership agreements. Joint ownership agreements are agreements between inventors or owners of patents which generally are used to resolve any issues that might arise with ownership....
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What is a Patent Cooperation Treaty?
(252 Clicks)
The PCT is the Patent Cooperation Treaty. It is signed by more than 130 countries and it governs the harmonization of patent laws and it enables people to preserve their rights to file in any foreign country. The reason you want to pre...
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What is a Patent?
(257 Clicks)
The patent is an intellectual property right issued by the federal government that protects creations of the human mind that also improve society and are original to their creator. That means that the person who actually came up with ...
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What is a plant patent?
(250 Clicks)
The key legal requirement for obtaining a plant patent is that the plant you have created must be one that is asexually reproduced, such as certain types of flowers. Plants that reproduce via the process of pollination, however, are c...
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What is a priority date for a patent application?
(316 Clicks)
In this section, we are going to identify some related and miscellaneous issues. A lot of these issues center around whether you filed other patent applications that this invention is claiming the priority to. Were there any other pate...
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What is a Second Office Action?
(258 Clicks)
The Second Office Action comes after you have already responded to an office action once. If the examiner agrees with you, they might give you new rejections with new references. If they do not agree with you, they might make the Secon...
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What is a trade secret?
(244 Clicks)
Trade secret is a very broad concept. It could include inventions but it does not have to. It could be any confidential information that is maintained by a company and not disclosed to the whole world or an entity. Trade secrets are v...
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What is an Invention date?
(274 Clicks)
A claim's invention date is the date that that particular concept was first fully conceived by the inventor, when all the pieces of how that invention would work and function were fully thought through by the inventor in their head. It ...
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What is an Office Action?
(284 Clicks)
An Office Action is something that the Patent Office may provide as a challenge to your patent application. In writing, the examiner raises formal issues such as the fact that the drawings need to be fixed, or that the specification n...
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What is documentation?
(245 Clicks)
Why is it important to document an invention? First, documenting the invention helps to prove the conception date; when did you first come up with your idea. It also helps sometimes to prove the first reduction to practice; when was th...
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What is inadvertent infringement?
(258 Clicks)
Inadvertent infringement is when someone does not know that they are infringing. They may not know because they never did a search of the patent. They may not have noticed. If they do not have the intent to infringe or knowledge becau...
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What is Intellectual Property?
(251 Clicks)
Intellectual property can refer to any creation of the human mind. It could be an idea, an invention, a business method, a logo, a picture, a photograph, or a work of authorship like a book - nearly any creation of the human mind.&nbs...
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What is new matter in a patent application?
(276 Clicks)
I am going to answer the question here of what is new matter in a patent application? What is new matter? You hear this term “new matter”. What is that? Well, new matter is basically anything new that you add to a patent application ...
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What is Notice of Allowance?
(289 Clicks)
In this section I am going to talk to you about what is a Notice of Allowance. A Notice of Allowance is when the Patent Office has agreed to grant you a patent. If the amendments are sufficient, the Patent Office is convinced and now t...
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What is prior art?
(272 Clicks)
Prior art is anything that is older than your invention's conception date. So prior art really relates to anything. It could be magazine articles or academic theses that are in a library somewhere, or it could include prior publicatio...
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What is Provisional Patent?
(308 Clicks)
So what is a provisional patent? In summary, it is nothing. Provisional patents do not exist in the world. There are provisional patent applications, but you can never get a provisional patent. There are only full utility patents tha...
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What is the class of your invention?
(259 Clicks)
In this section, we are going to discuss patent invention class and the invention title. The invention class has to do with the general area where your invention falls. The Patent and Trademark Office identifies four invention classes....
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What is the Paris Convention?
(255 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to answer what is the Paris Convention. The Paris Convention is an organization that was formed when a number of countries got together and they signed a treaty that allows for one year to file an application...
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What problem does your invention solve?
(204 Clicks)
Typically, many patent attorneys, including myself, do not always include the optional section regarding the “objects of the invention” in a completed patent application that we file. By “objects of the invention&rdq...
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What rights does a patent owner have?
(167 Clicks)
A patent owner has the right to decide whether or not you or someone else is going to be able to practice the patent in a given time period or for the duration of the patent. They have the right to decide whether to license, whether to ...
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What to do after your patent application has been rejected?
(192 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to discuss how does one appeal a patent application after Final Office Action. After Final Office Action, you could file a petition to appeal the case to the Board of Patent Appeals and the USPTO who will cons...
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When your invention is a new combination
(240 Clicks)
So I am going to talk about what are some secondary factors that you might be able to use to overcome an obviousness rejection when your invention is really a combination of things that previously existed. The basic thing and one of the...
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Which international treaties is the United States a party to?
(158 Clicks)
So what are other international treaties that the US is a signatory to that is related to patent? There are some bilateral treaties such as between the US and China, US and Taiwan, US and India, and US and Thailand that actually allow f...
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Who are the joint owners of a Patent?
(177 Clicks)
In this section, I am going to talk about who are the joint owners of a patent. The joint owners are all the listed parties under patent inventors that are listed on the patent; they are presumed to be joint owners unless there is an as...
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Who can sue and be sued for Patent infringement?
(206 Clicks)
The question here is who you can sue and who can be sued for patent infringement. Any company that is infringing your claim in a country that you have patent protection in, you could sue. Generally, the patent owner can sue the manufact...
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Who is an inventor?
(185 Clicks)
Are you an inventor? If you are, certain rights and responsibilities come with the territory and it is important that you understand what protections the law affords you and in turn, what duties you have under the law. Inv...
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Who should you sell your patent to?
(226 Clicks)
If you have an issued patent, not everybody on the street wants to buy patents, so you have to identify the buyer. Who are the potential buyers that might be interested in the patent that you have? So identify the potential buyers by l...
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Why does one need drawings for a patent?
(166 Clicks)
In this section, we are going to be creating and helping you decide on what is the best way to write about your figures and drawings. Figures and drawings are basically things that illustrate to an examiner, or ideally in the future to ...
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Why Patent Attorneys do not sign NDA's ?
(306 Clicks)
Patent attorneys do not usually sign NDAs because the document that you are asking a patent attorney to write is going to be a public document. Patents become public when they issue. They become public when they get published by the pa...
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Will you be tracked during a Prior Art Search?
(304 Clicks)
The question is will you be tracked if you do a patent search? Probably not but with the federal laws now on privacy and national security, you may well be. But the reality is for all intents and purposes, no one is watching you when y...
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