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In This Issue
Featured Article
Dividing your Invention
Admin Fees Value
Tracking a Ponzi Schemer
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 Newsletter - October  2014
 
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Patent Office Restriction Requirements

Subdividing your Invention


 

In more and more  patent prosecutions  that my clients have been involved in,  the patent office has required that they divide their patents into multiple versions.  This process of division is called a "restriction".  It comes from the argument that the claims of a patent are sufficiently broad to fall into at least two and perhaps more patent classes.  The patent office now appears to want to restrict each patent to a single class.


 

The effect of this requirement on the inventor is to increase complexity and cost of the patent application.  For every additional patent stemming from the original application the patent office will require additional fees.  Their fees are  added to whatever the attorney will charge for the additional applications.

 

 

If the inventor doesn't want to pay for additional applications then he or she will have to drop some of the original set of claims as the division requirement are usually based on the claims.  For example asserting that Claims 1-8 go in Class A,   claims 9-14 in Class B,  and claims 15-20 in class C.  

 

One can immediately see that the more claims the patent has the more likely it is to be divided.  I'm not sure I remember the patent office requiring division within a claim but I'm not sure of that.


 

There are strategies that an inventor can use to reduce some of this additional cost burden.  

  • He can argue with the patent office that the restriction is not correct.  This is something the attorney will need to do, showing the examiner was wrong in asserting that the claims fall into different classes-  This prosecution round of course costs money.
  • He can agree with the divisions and drop all claims  choosing only those in the  particular  class specified by the examiner.
  • He can file the application on one set of claims and write provisional applications on the other sets.  This will preserve these claims for at least a year and since provisionals  are both cheaper to file not examined will save money.  In a year things may well be different and a decision can be more accurately made on whether to convert the provisional applications to non-provisional..

For help with these kinds of issues look into our Second Opinion service which is linked here.
 

 

 


 

email  rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com 

or  give us a call at  (585) 520-3539  

 

What do Admin Fees Pay For?

ITTr Logo
ITTr's fee structure is mostly based on a commission paid  to it when patent is sold or licensed.  However we also offer a reduced commission when a client pays an administrative fee.  That fee may be deducted from the commission which is due on sale. 

Many clients reject the idea of paying an "upfront fee" out of hand because of prior bad experiences of their own or others with companies who took their money and did nothing else.

However such an approach is short sighed.  Administrative fees in our case are needed to pay for sales materials such as fliers and for the work done by outside staff such as callers.  With an administrative fee paid  ITTr can hire top quality professionals to create artwork and can get more calls made much more quickly than if they have to be done by internal staff.

But there is another much bigger advantage to the client.  The administrative fee is usually much smaller that  the difference between the commission paid with and without one.   For example consider Table II from ITTr's website.  For a $500,000 sale the commission is 10% less with an administrative fee than without one.  So if one pays an administrative fee which can be as small as $5000, one can save $45000 in commissions paid later.

ITTr is currently considering how we present the issue of Administrative fees to our prospects and clients.  We hope to have some new materials available in the future that will clarify the benefits to the client of  using these options to get greater value for their investment.




For more information write to rblazey@ittrifecta.com or call (585) 520-3539

Sherlock Tracks a Criminal
Penguin Logo

One of the products that Penguin provides is a process for locating hard to find objects.  The process was originally created to find items such as parts of equipment no longer being manufactured such as a replacement for a broken valve from water heater with  that is no longer made.

However we never know what a client will bring us  and one client brought us the problem of tracking down a Ponzi schemer who had absconded with his investment dollars and disappeared.

The names here as they say have been "disguised to protect the innocent",  so you can think of this crook, lets call him Rex,  as a prototypical  Bernie Madoff type.  But unlike Bernie who simply took his clients money, this person also disappeared.   He shut down his website, turned off his phones and moved out of his office.

Some people said he had gone to South America.  Our client asked Penguin's "Sherlock" to find him.  And to my great surprise we did.   Ruth Balkin has access to many "people tracking" databases and using them we were able to find this track this persons movements through a series of different addresses and even identify who he was living with.

Most important for our client,  we identified a court case in another state where someone was suing Rex for taking his funds in a similar manner.   Our client had the option of joining the case but chose not to do so.

Still it was very instructive to see how it was possible to find someone like this for which we had not much information except what our client knew about his past activities.

Incidentally we were also able to show that the "banks" where the clients funds had supposedly been deposited were bogus.

So if you are looking for something unusual and cant find it,  contact The  Rochester Penguin Group and ask about Sherlock..



Please contact us by email 

to rblazey@rochester.rr.com or
 visit our website at www.RochesterPenguinGroup.com
 or call us at (585) 520=3539
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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