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Are patents boring?
(745 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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Busting common Patent Myths
(922 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 you patent software?
(1398 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?
(681 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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How do you prosecute a Design Patent Application?
(811 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 is a Patent Application abandoned?
(2217 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 respond to a Final Office Action?
(2329 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?
(2840 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?
(752 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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What are the additional issues in patent prosecution?
(1211 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 other factors?
(1076 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 steps to take to patent your invention?
(875 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 do you mean by an obvious invention?
(1659 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 does a Patent pending mean?
(886 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 it mean if your patent application is published?
(2441 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 is a Claim's Priority Date?
(852 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 First Office Action?
(1385 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?
(765 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 priority date for a patent application?
(1987 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?
(810 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 an Invention date?
(710 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 documentation?
(667 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 new matter in a patent application?
(1121 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 the class of your invention?
(833 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 to do after your patent application has been rejected?
(940 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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Why does one need drawings for a patent?
(535 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 ?
(1430 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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