Posts Tagged: "inventor"

The term patent pending is a well recognized term of art that many inventors rightfully covet. It subtly, and very directly, conveys great meaning. It means that an inventor has taken steps to protect their invention in hopes of ultimately obtaining a patent. It also conveys to consumers the aura of innovativeness. Of course, patent pending status is just a stop on the road to obtaining a U.S. patent.

Obtaining a patent can be the best business move you could ever make. On other hand, it may wind up costing you time, energy and a lot of money that you didn’t need to spend. The investment placed into getting a patent may be wise, but it is important to realize that no one is simply going to show up on your doorstep with a money dump truck and unload lottery like winnings onto your stoop. The road to riches in the invention world is hazardous, has many detours and seldom goes as planned. That is why the first question you absolutely must ask yourself before you rush off to your friendly neighborhood patent attorney is this: Why do you want to get a patent?

When you are moving from idea to invention to patent, regardless of how or why you find yourself stuck in the idea phase, the first order of business to get the ball rolling. You need momentum. In order to get that ball rolling what you need is a strategy to help you move past the idea and learn to describe your idea with enough specifics so that it no longer is what the law would call a merely an idea.  In a nutshell, if you can describe your idea with enough detail you don’t have an idea, what you have is an invention, or at least the makings of an invention. Here are 7 concrete steps you can take to help you get from your idea, to an invention worth patenting.

Many people ask: can ideas be patented? The short answer is no. Unfortunately, despite what you may have heard from late night television commercials, there is no effective way to protect an idea with any form of intellectual property protection. Copyrights protect expression and creativity, not innovation.  Patents protect inventions. Neither copyrights or patents protect ideas. This is not to suggest that ideas are not valuable, but they are not valuable in the same way or sense that pop culture has led many to believe.

In May 2018, Scott Cooper and his companies, World Patent Marketing Inc. and Desa Industries Inc., agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that bans them from the invention promotion business, and ordered payment of $25,987,192. The FTC charged World Patent Marketing with being nothing more than a scam, bilking millions of dollars from inventors. “The record supports a preliminary finding that Defendants devised a fraudulent scheme to use consumer funds to enrich themselves,” concluded United States District Judge Darrin P. Gayles as he issued a preliminary injunction in August 2017. Matthew G. Whitaker, the Acting Attorney General of the United States who ascended to the position with the resignation of Jeff Sessions, served on the advisory board of World Patent Marketing. Worse, Whitaker was involved in some of the egregious intimidation that led to the charges, issuance of an injunction and ultimately the settlement.

In some important ways a patent application should be akin to an instruction manual, but unlike the aforementioned BBQ grill, the reader of relevant skill in the area is the one that should be able to follow along. Having said this, there is an important caveat! A patent is not a blueprint… Have you ever seen a worthwhile instruction manual without good, high-quality drawings showing you what to do? Probably not. So, if you’ve been frustrated by the decreasing quality of instruction manuals when “some assembly is required”, you fundamentally already know exactly what you need to do when you draft a patent application. Lots of drawings, lots of descriptive text that focuses on the key elements of the invention — that’s what makes a great patent application.

Cobra Products filed a lawsuit for patent infringement. G.T. Water then filed for a re-examination of my patent at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to invalidate my patent claims. My licensing agreement with Cobra and BrassCraft was to share equally in the cost of defending my patent. However, Cobra Products elected not to help me in the defense of my patent at the USPTO. I was forced to bear the total cost of that alone. After seven years of validity proceedings, which have cost more than $250,000, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has invalidated all 12 of my claims covering the Zip-It. How can the USPTO issue a patent with 12 claims and then use the PTAB to neuter my patent? Since this has been going back and forth with the court system, there are now numerous other entities which have engaged in copying and infringing my patented invention.

The patent process is long and complex, but well worth the effort if it means protecting your invention and your new company. Key decisions made along the way can help simplify future steps in the process and make obtaining a patent significantly more efficient. Early on, determining a patent scope through patentability searches can help narrow a patent application to the important novel aspects that are most worthwhile to protect. Similarly, preparing a thorough provisional application can make the non-provisional application preparation much simpler and afford better protection against later published works or filings by others. By thinking about these key decisions ahead of time and being aware of the patent process, you can be more prepared when the time comes to seek protection for your invention.

Writing a patent application is not as easy as many think. Indeed, the concept of usefully describing the invention, which on its face seems easy enough to understand, is not as straight forward as it might seem, and why you cannot simply file an abbreviate description of an invention and think that suffices to protect anything really. This article looks at the most common parts of a patent application, and provides discussion about what each section needs to include.

Having produced a non-obvious, non-abstract invention and playing by the patent office’s rules is no guarantee of a patent granting. Some examiners have refused to issue patent applications regardless of the merits because doing so would run the risk of them losing their jobs if they received further negative reviews from the Patent Quality initiative. All patents run the risk of expensive oppositions from well-funded competitors. 

Better practice remains to file applications with any and all drawings necessary to understand the invention. The best practice is not only to file what is necessary, but to also file drawings that go beyond what is minimally necessary. You never know later on during prosecution what details you may wish you had explained in the written text, what nuances you may wish you had elaborated upon. Drawings can be your best friend, and case law has shown that judges can and will look to the drawings to see what is fairly disclosed and would be understood by the person of skill in the relevant technology or scientific field. Therefore, with drawings more is better.

What follows is a letter on the topic of PTAB reform that will be sent to USPTO Director Andrei Iancu on Monday, May 14, 2018. The letter seeks urgent action on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in order to bring balance to a process that has tormented inventors for the last 6 years. We already have over 100 signatures from patent owners, patent attorneys, investors and inventors. If you would like to sign onto this letter please visit http://100patentowners.org.

While Jack Johnson is most well known as a the first African-American to be heavyweight boxing champion, he was also an inventor and entrepreneur. The crime Johnson was convicted of was transporting a white woman across state lines for an immoral purpose. Johnson was married three times, each time to a white woman.

“We are focused on delivering reliable and predictable IP rights,” Director Iancu told the Inventor Group Presidents gathered at the Patent Office as he addressed them to start the day this morning. “I have called for a new dialog in intellectual property. A dialogue focused on the brilliance of the inventors, the excitement of invention and the incredible benefits they bring to our economy… to our history.”

Here is what Director Iancu had to say about the Wright Brothers: “At my swearing-in, I remarked that through the doors of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office comes our future. And indeed, it does, and it always did. We must celebrate that. From Thomas Edison to the Wright Brothers, from Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer to Steve Jobs, American inventors have fueled the imagination of our people for generations. We are a pioneering people who overcome large obstacles in order to realize our dreams and create prosperity. Inventors help make dreams reality, and American invention changes the world. Indeed, with American patents, humans made light, began to fly, treated disease, and enabled instant communications across the globe from tiny devices in our pockets.”