Easy Patent Guide

If you have invented something, the chances are that you don’t have the resources to mass-produce the product yourself. You will need to send the plans and designs off to someone else to make in their factory. When you do this, how can you protect your idea against the people that might see it? The answer is patent registration. This tactic will give you the exclusive right to profit from your invention.

There is no doubt that being able to file for a patent on a new invention, idea, or process is essential to keeping the necessary flow of new ideas coming in a free market economy. After all, without a patent, businessmen could take advantage of a new idea or product by simply copying it without the inventor’s permission and reap the financial rewards instead of the rightful inventor himself. If this were commonplace, many new inventions would never see the light of day because of fear that they would be stolen.

A patent is a set of ownership rights given by a state to investors so that they have the exclusive rights to make, use and sell their own invention. Patents are given so as to prevent others from making, selling or importing the same invention.

The inventor is called the patentee and he also has to comply with other laws and regulations to use his own invention. He can only market or sell his product under regulatory approval. If his product or design is an improvement of a product that is already there in the market he has to first get license from the owner of the earlier broader patent covering the same type of product. The owner of the improved product can also have the right to exclude the patent owner from using the improvement.

A US patent gives an inventor the right to exclude all others from making, using, importing, selling or offering to sell the invention for up to 20 years without the inventor’s permission. This gives the inventor the opportunity to produce and market the invention himself, or license others to do so, and to make a profit.

A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the US Patent Service. The term of a new patent is either 14 or 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees depending on the kind of patent. US Patent Service patent grants are effective only within the US, US territories, and US possessions. There are several requirements for an invention to be patentable which are enumerated below.

The U.S. Patent Office carefully reviews the patent application in order to determine the invention’s patentability. Upon submission of a patent application to the U.S. Patent Office an Examiner reviews the application and prepares an opinion as to whether the application complies with the applicable rules and regulations, and whether the invention is indeed “patentable.” Typically, the U.S. Patent Office Examiner asserts various objections and rejections to the claims of an application in a written document referred to as an Office Action. If the applicant wishes to continue to pursue patent protection, the applicant must respond to each of the U.S. Patent Office Examiner’s rejections and objections detailed in the Office Action, amending the application accordingly.

If you intend to apply for a patent, you should not publicly disclose the invention before you file an application at UK Patent Office because this could be counted as prior publication of your invention. Any type of disclosure (whether by word of mouth, demonstration, advertisement or article in a journal), by the applicant or anyone acting for them, could prevent the applicant from getting a patent at UK Patent Office for his invention. It could also be a reason for having the patent revoked by UK Patent Office if one was obtained. It is essential that the applicant only makes any disclosure under conditions of strict confidence. Any conversation you have with patent agents, solicitors or UK Patent Office

staff is confidential, so anything you say to any of these people will not count as revealing your invention early.