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In This Issue

Patent Classes

Steps to a Sale

The Jump Quadrant

Quick Links

Our Blog

ITTR

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New Years Present

The USPTO is offering a present to inventors. If you wait until 2014 to get your patent issued many charges may be reduced.

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Newsletter - November 2013

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.

Patent Classes and What they Mean

To anyone outside of the patent office and patent practitioners, like ourselves, the topic of Patent Classes can seem quite arcane. Yet this topic can be of significant importance to inventors. It can help determine if the patent office requires them to divide their patent application in two ,doubling its cost. It can also determine which prior art patents the inventor must compete against to get a patent approved in the first place.

Patent Classification in the US has two parts- The Main Class and the Subclass. Those two parts are usually written as MainClass/Subclass as in 999/111. The place to look at patent classes is a subsection of the USPTO website which I link here-.

When you go to that page you are immediately faced with the choice of Class systems. Their are two systems CPC which is used abroad and USPC which is used in the US. For some unknown reason the patent office makes CPC the default so you have to start by changing to USPC.

Next you are presented with a table of Choices. Usually I pick Definitions or Schedule since I usually know the class I'm working with. However there are 7 tabs in a menu bar on the top of the page where you can find additional information. This Youtube video illustrates using the patent classification webpage.

Part 3 - How to Search Patents by Classification

If you have a particular patent that you are interested in you can find the patent class listed on the front page of the patent under the filing date as US Class in bold type. Other related classes are often listed on the same line in light type. There is one more line under patent class which is "Field of Search". That shows where the examiner looked for patents to cite against the invention. It usually includes the principal class and related class and sometimes a few others.

You will not find patent classes on a patent application as they are usually assigned after the patent is approved.

The patent class system uses something called "Indents" to show how sub-classes fit together. For example consider a baseball bat. The main class might be something like "Games". Then the first subclass might be games involving sticks or clubs [first indent]. Then the next indent- baseball bats and the final indent metal- The table of classes would then look like the following-

Games

. Games using Sticks or Clubs

.. Hockey

.. Lacrosse

.. Baseball Bats

... Metal Baseball Bats

So if you invented a new metal base ball bat you know where to look [at the 3 dot level]. If your bat could be metal or wood go up one level etc. When we do a patent search we often have to search through multiple levels of indenting. If you want to know more about this subject please let me know.

When we do a patent search we start by finding relevant patents with Keyword searches but we then quickly identify the patent classes that keep coming up in relevant patents. We then use the patent classification tool linked above to look at those classes. When you find a particular subclass listed you will notice a red letter P to the left of the class number. Clicking on that will show the entire contents of the subclass.

Inventors often run afoul of the class system when they try to combine multiple concepts in the same patent application. Often that is unavoidable as a new technology may spawn multiple different applications. However, if those applications fall into different patent classes the patent office will often seek to divide the application into two or more patents doubling and sometimes tripling the charges owed to the USPTO. Its advisable when your attorney is drafting the application to ask what class they think it might fall into. Then take a look at the definition of that class from the Patent Class Website . Finally take a look at the patent claims. If they don't all clearly into that grouping and more importantly if some of them fall into another subclass, you may have a problem to discuss with your attorney.

For more information on patent classes or any other patent question please contact us. Just send an email to rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or give us a call at (585) 520-3539

Steps to a Sale

ITTr's main function is to find potential buyers for a patented invention. That task however is far more involved and complex than most inventors think.

If selling patents was easy inventors wouldn't need brokers like ITTr and would simply sell the patents themselves.

The sad fact is that unless you have a breakthrough invention whose value is easily percieved, you will find most doors closed to you. Particularly at big corporations that are most interested in protecting themselves from lawsuits and have an internal R&D staff who regard any idea coming in from the outside as a threat to their turf.

In order to find a potential buyer for an invention we have to look for an alignment between what the invention does and the markets served by manufacturers , retailers and other suppliers.

ITTr uses a process called ICF which I will not go into here but which is discussed on our website.

The first task in the ICF process is "Identification". Here we have to find out who is most likely to want to buy or license the invention. That company will likely not be a retailer or wholesaler. It may not even be a manufacturer- The end user of the product may buy it at Acme, but Acme buys their inventory from Beta.

Beta, the manufacturer may sell through many different channels. Often with a really new invention its not easy figure out what the channel/retailer and manufacturer might use. A simple improvement to an existing product is usually easy to place. However a game changing development or a brand new technology is much harder to decide where to market.

That is true because the buyer must put in place not just the manufacturing for the new product he licensed, but a whole new marketing channel as well. Those channels are notoriously difficult and expensive to create.

Thus the smart thing to do is first find the existing channels to the customers you want to serve and then look for what manufacturers are selling through them.

To help you do that please contact ITTr. Just send an email to rblazey@ittrifecta.com or phone me at (585) 520-3539

Selling New Products to New Customers

The "Jump" Quadrant

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The opportunity portfolio system divides business opportunities into 4 groups which we call Quadrants. We also give the Quadrants names. Quadrant IV which is selling new products to new customers we call the "Jump" quadrant because it is the biggest departure from the Business comfort zone of Quadrant I, (selling existing products to existing customers).

In the Jump quadrant everyone is a start-up even if they have been in business for many years because everything they are doing is unfamiliar. Well known methods, tools procedures and even staffers may not be useful in this area. That is why the "Jump" quadrant involves the highest level of risk. That is also why it offers the highest level of rewards.

Suppose the R&D department of your company makes a major breakthrough that could spawn a whole new industry. This could be of enormous value to the company but it may also appear way to risky to try.

The new development will often displace current products that are successful in the marketplace and provide a large amount of the companies revenue. Short sighted managers see this problem and often try to squash the new idea. Here they make a fundamental mistake because it is very hard to hide a breakthrough development.

While the company that invented something may not want to commercialize it, a competitor which has no such inhibitions may well decide to do so, so that not only will the business the company was trying protect be lost , the new business that the invention might have provided may not provide any revenue to its inventor either.

Revolutionary improvements in products are often not commercialized by the companies that invented them. I'm aware of one instance where a breakthrough improvement which displaced an existing product was actually given by the company to its main competitor. The competitor commercialized it, appropriated the current product's market, and the originating company actually had to buy back the patent for its invention from its competitor.

To help you define opportunities in the "Jump" quadrant and decide which ones are worth pursuing please contact us.

Please email me at rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or call (585) 520-3539. Put "Jump Quadrant" on the subject line and we will get right back to you.

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

Disclaimers

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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