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The America Invents Act
Identify your Targets
Do you know WHO you are dealing with?
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Ideas to Assets

To make it easier for our customers to find information on the many websites of the BML family of companies, we have launched a new website Ideas to Assets. 

 

This site is basically  a categorized set of landing pages with links to appropriate contact on our websites.  Please try it out an let us know how you like it

 

 
 Newsletter - October 2011
  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.

The "America Invents Act"

What it means to you

 

Recently the Congress passed  the America Invents Act and the President signed it into law.  There has been a considerable amount of discussion about the law in the press but much of that discussion has been incomplete and narrow focusing on just a few points and making unsupported political arguments about the rest of the law.  The best summary of the law for the layman is in a Wikipedia article.

 

The most well-known provision of the law and the one most discussed is its conversion of the US system from  a "First to Invent"  system to a "First to File"  system , aligning the US with the rest of the world.   Patent attorney Tracy Jong discusses this provision in an article in her October 2011 newsletter.  Aside from this well known provision there are many others.  Some provisions are arcane and some have real significance to the small inventors that we deal with at BML every day.

 

Opposition procedures.
This is a complex section which increases the power of other parties to contest a patent application.  It means that when an application is published both  before and after it is granted there are other parties besides the patent examiner who will provide input on  whether it is or should have been issued.  Those parties can well include the inventor's competitors particularly if they are filing applications in the same area as the inventor.  Also  the new  Post Grant Review allows the opposition to challenge a granted patent for up to a year after issuance.  There is a great deal of discussion about how Post Grant Review will impact small inventors (see the Wikipedia article for details).
 
Additional changes
  • Tax strategy inventions:  Inventions devised to circumvent tax laws are not patent-able
  • False marking: Inventions may not be marked falsely with patent numbers or "patent pending" if that is not a true description of their status.    
  • Filing by other than inventor: Another party, such as the assignee can file a patent application without the inventor's permission.  This means large companies whose employees executed patent assignment agreements can file  patent applications in those inventors names.
  • Best mode- while an inventor is still required to list the "best mode"  for practicing their invention, failing to do so is not grounds to deny granting the patent.
  • Prior user rights.- This provisions prevents someone from patenting your existing product out from under you.  If you have been practicing an invention but have not patented it,  someone else can no longer prevent you from making your product.  Actually they should never have been granted the patent in the first place, but if they do get a patent, they can't exercise it against you if you can show you have been practicing the invention for a period of time
  • Micro-entity-- This provision is a boon to inventors who are short on cash.  There is a 75% reduction in patent office fees for inventors whose income and other provisions qualify them to be included in this category.

 

There's lots more to say about this law.  If you are still confused or what more help please check us out at www.alacartepatents.com , write us at rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or  give us a call at  (585) 520-3539 

 

 

 

 

 


ITTr Logo

Identifying Targets  

What you can do to help

  

 

Inventors often know a lot more than they think they do about who is most likely to be interested in buying or licensing their invention.   They work in the field where the invention was made and they know who the major players are.  They also know what the best current products are that solve the problem that their invention does and why their invention is better than what is currently being used.

 

They understand these things but because they are focused on their invention and how it works they seldom realize how much they know about the market for it.   ITTr knows how to introduce inventions to the marketplace, but we can never be as familiar with the invention and its benefits as the inventor.

 

Thus our role at ITTr includes  getting  the inventor to tell us what they know about the marketplace.   We often do this in interviews with the inventor and we also do it by use of our ROTH scoring template.

 

Anyone who fills in a ROTH has to think about some of the marketing and business issues that they may not have considered when creating their invention.

We are considering producing a questionnaire for inventors.  It's not ready yet but if we had one it would include questions like:

  • What is the problem your invention solves?
  • Who would use your invention?
  • What are they using now to solve the problem your invention solves?
  • Why is your invention superior?
  • What is your estimated cost for manufacturing the invention (UMC)
  • What is the selling price of similar items in the market?
  • Where are these items sold?
  • Who are the most well-known manufacturers of the competing products?

Taking Edison's  electric light as an example,  there were no similar lamps to use in market estimates.  But people were still lighting their houses.  They were using gas or candles.  Thus Edison could estimate the market size for light bulbs beginning  with an estimate of the numbers of gaslights and candles in use at the time. 

 

One has to be careful with these estimates however.  When Xerox was studying the market for the first copier they used the market for carbon paper as a guide.  While this was correct it completely missed what became one of Xerox best markets, copying references from textbooks something that Xerography alone could do.  The first investors Xerox contacted thought the copier's market potential was too small because they made this mistake.

 

So,  before ITTr can  start looking for contacts to approach on your behalf, take a look at the list of questions above and see if you can help us generate a better target list. Think of what your invention replaces and what new benefits it brings to the world.

 

Then contact us at ITTr and help  us find the most attractive means to convince buyers to invest in your invention  (and find them too)   
  

 

 

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Do you REALLY know who you are dealing with ?

Is A Google Search enough to find out?

 Penguin Logo

 

Many companies get involved in transactions with companies and individuals they know little about.  Working with another company on a joint project is very different than just purchasing a well-defined and understood product or service.

 

You need to know whether the company you intend to partner with, or invest in is going to keep their promises.   This is even more difficult to determine when the product of the joint venture is an undefined result of the venture itself.

 

A traditional way of evaluating companies used by business brokers is the due diligence report.   This is a very thorough evaluation of the company, judging them on a great number of different metrics both quantitative and qualitative.   However it's a time consuming and expensive process and hard to justify if the company you are interested in is hard to evaluate or you want to compare a number of similar companies.

 

First Look™ provides carefully selected sections from a traditional due diligence report to give a client a good understanding of the target company without including a lot of details that may not be needed.  

 

If a client wants more information more detail is available in Bronze and Silver reports.  We show an example of the Table of Contents from Bronze level report below.  Only the major categories are shown . However, as an example, we show the subcategories in the Company Numbers section but the other sections are similarly divided.

 

Bronze Level Report TOC
  • Subject Company's Industry Overview
  • Company Numbers
    • Gross Sales
    • Net Sales
    • Employee Count
  • Organization Data
  • Financial and Operational Data
  • Product Offerings, Service Lines, and Customer Information
  • News Articles and Publicity
  • Legal and Regulatory  - Skyminder can provide upon request
  • Intellectual Property
  • Information on Competitors

 

As an additional illustration we have a complete              First Look™ report which we prepared on a local Grocery chain for your inspection upon request.   Just go to the Penguin website and click the Contact us tab and let us know you want it

 

  

 
We appreciate your responses to our newsletters.  Please send us your comments.  We are always interested in what you want to know.
 
Sincerely,
 

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC

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