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This newsletter is for the benefit of: our customers both current and past, our workers , board members and friends including those of you we haven't talked to recently. Please feel free to forward to others who might be interested in our activities. Please realize that this newsletter contains only our opinions on patent matters. We are not authorized to give legal advice. If you are seeking such advice please contact an attorney.
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Should you File a Provisional Patent Application?
Provisional patent applications have value but its not always what the people who write them think it is. A provisional patent gives the applicant one additional year to file a non-provisional patent application but its no substitute for a real patent application. If you don't file a non-provisional within one year the provisional expires and you loose the one year extension that it brought you.
The most important value of a provisional appliccation is to protect your patent rights from being lost due to public disclosure or offering for sale. If you do either of those things without filing a patent application, you start a one year period during which you MUST file the patent application or loose all rights to your invention which becomes part of the public domain. You loose all European rights on offering for sale or public disclosure , immmediately. There is no grace period for European applications. Read the rest of the article.
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Storming the Castle: How to get your ideas in front of the Right people
One of the most difficult problems in patent licensing is making contact with the people who have the authority to make a decision on licensing your invention. In many companies today thedecision makers are so well insultated from the outside world that Michal Boylan in his book "Accelerants" likened reaching them to storming a castle.
Not that these folks have ever been easy to reach, but in the past the "gatekeepers" were often human beings who could be reasoned with. Those individuals have long since disappeared and been replaced by voicemail trees that operate like Escher's endless staircase leading nowhere..
However, all is not lost because there are new media available that offer different routes to the decison makers. Among these are the social media , particularly LinkedIn.
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Kicking the Tires
Checking out Potential Joint Venture Partners
It's important to know who it is you are doing business with. Many small businesss people have found to their dismay that the company they had invested time and money getting to joint venture with was not who they thought they were.
We had such an experience recently when someone contacted one of our companies with an exciting proposal. They claimed to be part of a well respected firm which could have credibly stood behind the promises they were making , but it later turned out they were working on thier own and using the firm to establish a false credibility.Read the rest of the article |
