Breakfast Seminar

 If you missed our Breakfast Seminar on 4/16 you can find a video of it on our Youtube Channel

The Patent Timeline

 The life of a patent can be very long.  Up to 20 years if the patent goes to its full life, or its life can be cut short along the way by any number of circumstances,  some expected and some which come as surprises to most inventors.  To help inventors understand what they are getting into when the file for a patent we have developed a chart we call the The Patent Timeline.  Think of it as the map of a highway that has off ramps and on ramps.  And like a highway there are many tolls to be paid along the way. [Please note this timeline is for US patents only,  foreign patents are another story to be covered later]

At the beginning of the road there is the invention itself represented by the blue arrow.   Since we are assuming that the inventor decides to get a patent, the next step is a patent search.  One thing about this diagram is that all the call out blocks which identify events also represent potential stopping points.   The purpose of a patent search is to identify patents of others that may be cited by a patent examiner to deny the inventor a patent.  If on examining the search results the inventor and his/her attorney conclude the prior art is just too strong to beat,  the inventor may abandon patenting his invention.  More often the attorney will adjust the claims to best avoid the prior art likely to be cited by an examiner.

After the search there is a decision to make.  Assuming the inventor decides to file for a patent,  should it be a provisional or not?  Provisional patents are basically placeholders that give the inventor a year to commercialize his invention,  raise money etc.  without loosing his patent rights.   They are often much less expensive than a non-provisional patent application.  But they only last one year.   If a non-provisional application is not filed, the provisional is lost and it is as if it never existed.  When a non-provisional application is filed,  we get to the next step in about 18 months.  The patent application is published on the USPTO's web site.  This is the point at which the world sees the application and the point at which it becomes possible to enforce the patent if it is later granted.  Anyone who uses the patent after publication may owe royalties to the inventor when and if the patent is granted.

Around this time the patent prosecution phase starts.  I've likened Patent prosecution to a trial.  You can learn more about it from this video.

WhatitReallyTakes_V1.6

.If you succeed in convincing the patent office that you deserve a patent  the patent  will issue and you will receive a notice from the patent office along with a bill for their trouble.

In March 2013 "The America Invents Act"  went into effect.  Along with its many features [see my newsletter for an article on the AIA]  there was added a one  year period of "post grant opposition".  What that means is even though the patent office has granted you a patent and you have paid for it,  some competitor may come out of the woodwork and assert that they were wrong and you don't deserve the patent.  So hold your breath for one  more year.  Since the AIA is so new its not clear how often this feature will be used.

If you survive the post grant opposition you are free to practice your invention and stop others for doing so until the patent expires.  You will of course have to pay the legal costs to sue anyone who you think is infringing your patent.  This is so costly that many think that it makes a patent valueless, but in fact there are ways those inventors with few resources can protect their patent [see this article on how].

Of course if you want to keep your patent current even if you don't have to defend it you still have to keep paying the patent office "maintenance fees".   If you are using the patent or have a small portfolio those fees may not be too problematic, but if you have many patents particularly foreign ones you may find the charges get very big very quickly.  

For this reason even very large companies have put in policies of patent abandonment to stop paying for patents they aren't using.

Foreign patents are more complex.  We will save talking about them for a future article.   To learn more about this subject or any other patent related topic please contact us,

To contact us,  just send an email to rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or  give us a call at  (585) 520-3539