Easy Patent Guide

In March 2006, there was renewed concern about the patent system, manifested not only in discussion of the NTP v. RIM (BlackBerry) case, which settled for $612.5 million but also on the fate of the use of injunctions in patent infringement cases, to be reviewed by the Supreme Court in eBay v. MercExchange. The Wall Street Journal wrote that U.S. patent law is “deterring research and penalizing innovation,” and that the patent system is “fast becoming a detriment to U.S. competitiveness, not to mention basic fairness.” The idea that patents are not central to innovation can also be found in the philosophy of some venture capitalists, who will directly tell you “patents are not why we are investing.”

The recent patent application filed by Google details numerous items the search engine uses to rank web pages. The specific application is summarized as:

“A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.”

What’s It All About? The field of patent law is wide open to Biologists, Chemists, Engineers, Computer Scientists, and many other science and technology professionals. And it’s true; individuals with the proper science or engineering degree need only pass the Patent Bar to become registered Patent Agents.

Upon becoming a Patent Agent, you may gain employment writing and prosecuting patent applications at law firms, technology transfer offices, biotech or engineering corporations, and government institutes.

Search patent is one of the most basic thing an inventor has to do when applying for patent. Search patent enables the inventor to know if his invention is already patented or not. Search patent can determine if the proposed invention merits the patentability as set by the statutory conditions.

Patent office does not grant patents for “mere ideas or suggestions.” The rules also require that the patent be explicit enough such that anyone “ordinarily skilled in the art” can apply what they learn in the patent to make the invention and make it work successfully. One can patent an idea only if the idea is used to invent or discover any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement to an already patented invention. Practically anything made by humans, subject to the conditions and requirements of the law, is patentable. To patent an idea one must have an invention, not upon merely the idea or suggestion of a new invention.

Patent verdicts are the verdicts or decision hand out on a patent-related case. There are different Patent verdicts released on various patent-related cases filed in court. Some of these patent verdicts are controversial because of the nature of the cases.

In conducting patent search and investigations, there are a number of patent search engine that can help you do the investigation. For simple searches that only requires a known patent number, inventor, assignee, head title, etc. there are some patent search engine internet sources provided by national and international patent authorities. You can use : esp@cenet (EPODOC), DEPATISnet and the USPTO databases http://www.uspto.gov/patft/. These are good patent searches to begin the patent investigations of inventions.