Easy Patent Guide

Many companies begin manufacturing and selling their new product (a.k.a. their invention) to the marketplace before their patent is officially granted. They use the term “patent pending” to indicate that the product is proprietary and a patent is (just like the term states), pending.

The only way you (or any company) can ever legally use the term “patent pending” is when a patent application has been filed to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Any person or company who falsely uses this term can be fined. So take care to only use it when it is true.

Recently in Maine, I talked with a gentleman and we discussed at a coffee shop the issues concerning the Patent and Trademark Offices and the slow processing problems with registration of everything from a simple patent or concept patent to a Registered Trademark or Service Mark. Also this past week had an email conversation with a gentleman from NC in a small business regarding weak trademark and service mark case law in several states and at the Federal Level and how that affected him and the owner of a mark in Ohio. Also discussed the issues with an Aussie who now lives in BC Canada with regards to a cross border US Competitor using a name he intends to use and has already used in Canadian Commerce. First use laws and case laws are different that in Canada and the US. And certainly no trademark is worth a dollar in China. Some would disagree if you have the right attorney there in that country. I had mentioned these types of issues in a letter to the FTC and discussed the problems with patent law and not knowing, the patent books, which explain all this are over 400 plus pages now and when you are done reading them you may or may not know enough to get the job done.

Google applied for a patent on their ranking algorithm as of 15 months ago on December 31, 2003 and that application was posted on March 31st at the US Patent Office. It got the discussion forums buzzing this weekend. Even though I had substantial work to do and was behind on a project, I couldn’t resist the temptation to read the very long 14,000 word, 45 page application and see what it could mean to the volatile world of search.

US Patent application simply means a request filed before a patent office in which an applicant applies for a patent for an invention. The policy in US Patent application requires that an inventor should sufficiently reveal how an invention works to justify the grant of the patent. A US Patent application is examined in most jurisdictions.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were at first reluctant to grant software patents on inventions relating to computer software. Software patents cannot be granted to processes, machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter. Patents could not be granted to scientific truths or mathematical expressions of it. The PTO viewed computer programs and inventions containing or relating to computer programs as mere mathematical algorithms, and not processes or machines. As such, software related inventions were considered non-statutory.

There is only one Patent Office in the U.S. and it is found in Arlington, Virginia, close to Washington, DC. Once the patent application has been filed with the Patent office, a patent examiner carefully reviews the application in order to determine the invention’s patentability. The examination process takes 12 to 18 months depending on the workload and staffing of the Patent office. The Patent office examiners only verify that the description and claims per description by their inventors or patent attorneys, are new, unique, and not obvious to the Patent office. The Patent office examiners do not verify that an invention works or that it can ever be, or never has been, built. They try only to correctly verify that the invention is patentable and has not been patented in the U.S. before and their results have been overturned on more than one occasion. The Patent office will not tell you if your invention has already been invented by someone else unless you apply for a patent.

There are some noteworthy patent info that you need to keep in mind before filing for a patent application. A patent info you need to know is that patent application has two primary sections: the specification and the claims. The specification is essentially a detailed patent info description of the invention, including drawings if necessary, showing what the invention does, how it works, and disclosing its advantages over prior art. The description of the invention must meet certain legal requirements, including that it: (a) be thorough enough to allow a person skilled in the invention’s field of technology to make and use the invention, (b) identify the invention’s best mode of operation, and (c) provide a basis for and explanation of the terminology that is used in the following claims.