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Featured Article

Section 201

Who do You Pitch To?

Market Research that Pays

Letters to the Editor

Breakfast Seminar 4/19/16

If you didn't receive an invitation to the IEC Breakfast seminar on April 19 and would like to know more or to register, please email us.

New Website

Checkout our brand new website. Just Log on to www.bmllc.net. Also please tell us what you think. We are always looking to make it better.

Expedited Patent Examination for Seniors

I have just learned that the US patent office will offer their expedited service, which reduces the examination time from 18 months to as little as 3 months is free to those 65 and older. See Section IIIB of this link.

Letters to the Editor

Section at the End of this Newsletter

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Newsletter Archive

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Newsletter - March 2016

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to others who might be interested in our activities. Checkout our website

Defending against Section 101 Rejections

Our patent attorney friends have reported to me that Section 101 rejections of patent applications are becoming extremely common. The reason for this is the Alice decision which we wrote about in the August 2015 newsletter.

That decision apparently has caused the patent office to make routine the rejection of software patents and any other invention that makes use of an "abstract idea". Fundamentally they are taking a "guilty until proved innocent" approach to such inventions.

As we mentioned in August, Section 101 is intended to prevent the patenting of inventions, however valuable and novel, that could be described as "laws of nature" calling them discoveries and not inventions.

The patent examiners seem to have intepreted Section 101 as forbidding the patenting of any abstract idea. The problem comes in defining just what an "abstract idea" is. It has been forbidden for a long time to patent such mathematical construts as an equation, and its also forbidden to patent "laws of nature'.

The questions is when is an invention made which employs an abstract ideas (as almost all do) patentable and when is it not.

The linked article shows how one attorney was able to overcome Section 101 rejections by subdividing the abstract ideas contained in the invention. Here's another authors's suggestions as to how to overcome these rejections

"Simply put, we learned that applicant should specifically highlight an inventive concept, if the invention is inclined towards an abstract idea. By fulfilling this condition, one can reverse or downright avoid examiner rejections. Not only this, the 'Inventive concept' helps a patent survive in court trial of an invalidation analysis."

For many years we have taught the idea of a Novel Inventive Feature, which aligns with the idea of an Inventive concept. Suppose as in our example, the examiner had argued that Edison's idea of using a high resistance filament was an abstract idea.

But Edison would have had a powerful counterargument. Since he tested 2000 different materials before coming up with the right one for the filament, it is hard to argue that he was simply implementing an abstract idea arising from an equation or model.

Similarly the recent discovery of the W (God) particle which had long been predicted by Theory cannot be patentable, If however, someone was to invent a way of creating W particles, that might be.

This new interpretation of the law is very tricky and subject to a lot of subjective argument. Only time will tell which arguments are the most persuasive with patent examiners. I hope that by keeping up with the literature I will be better able to advise clients that are faced to argue against "abstract concept" rejection.

If you would like some help with your patent prosecution. Just contact us using the information below.

email rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com

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

Getting the Most out of your ROTH score

For some time ITTr has been offering a ROTH scoreing system. The ROTH which stands for (Rule of Thumb) is a 10 question multiple choice questionnaire which helps to establish how developed an invention is. The more developed the invention is the easier it is to sell and potentially the more money it is worth.

ROTH uses a 100 point scale to establish a number, ranging from an undeveloped idea at zero, to an invention in the market making money at 100 points.

The first use of the ROTH is just to look at the raw score against the table below to get a first cut at what its Score says about its development status..

But the ROTH can do much more than that. The next thing to do with your ROTH is to look at the questions where you scored low (A or B) and ask two questions. First, why was that score low and second what can be done to raise the score on that question.

A ROTH score is not fixed in time, it changes as the invention is developed. Thus even a low ROTH score can be improved by working on the questions which are answered with A's and B's.

Generally speaking ITTr doesn't take clients with ROTH scores under 50 as those inventions are in our opinion not developed enough to be saleable. Yet those ideas may have a very high potential value if developed further.

We are currently working on offering enhancements to the ROTH process that will help us work with clients whose low scores make them less attractive to buyers. When we have them in place we will display them on the ITTr website.

In the meantime if you would like some help in improving your ROTH score, just let us know.

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

Market Research that Pays You

OFFERS ON DEMAND

Penguins focus is on Market Research. All of our product offerings have something to do with that topic. But none of them make the customer any money as part of the research.

That is not true of Offers on Demand. OOD is a company that we have connected with that makes it possible for a vendor to sell their products on multiple websites associated with their customers interests and most importantly to pay only when a customer buys something. So unlike services such as Google Adwords, which is a Pay-Per-Click offering, OOD is a pay per sale offering.

OOD offers a natural connection to market research. When for example, a company wants to test the market interest in a new product or service, they can sign up with OOD to determine the amount of interest in that product as measured by the number of sales they rack up on a particular website.

OOD will design the "web window" which shows the clients product and will also sign up the websites to display it. Its a natural association with Penguin's Market Sonar offering.

So if you were a Market Sonar client we would ordinarily be making calls to targets who might be interested in what you are trying to sell or evaluate. But if we combine that with OOD we can not only determine which OOD targets are buyers of your product, we can also focus the Market Sonar calling on that group of buyers.

Further we can use names of real purchasers in our Voice of the Customer calling to determine why they purchased your product and what their reaction to it is. Thus OOD and Market Sonar form a natural Synergy.

If you are interested in trying this out. Just contact us.

just 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. See the New Letters to the Editor link in the block below

Sincerely,

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC

Comments and Letters to the Editor

To Readers of the BML Newsletter:

Many of you have wished to comment on articles in the newsletter and up until now there has been no mechanism to do so. Now if you wish to comment you can just reply to this article. Please mention the issue of the Newsletter (Month, Yr) and the title of the article you are commenting on. Add your name if you wish

Best Regards,

Dick Blazey

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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