Go provisional at the last or latest date you possibly can. file that as late as you reasonably can.
This is important as you might need those extra few days or weeks at the other end of the the provisional term period. It can be a race to fix up the provisional, with the unstoppable hounds of time biting your ankles and working their way up. All you might have done to fix it, is simply file much later than you did and do the right work earlier.
eg, if you are not going to do anything with the patent for almost a year, organize it, build it out, and don't file it until then.
Unless it is time sensitive as you feel it is just a matter of time before others stumble upon the given solution.
Then you have to make that decision of time to file or time to refine. Your choice.
This is important as you might need those extra few days or weeks at the other end of the the provisional term period. It can be a race to fix up the provisional, with the unstoppable hounds of time biting your ankles and working their way up. All you might have done to fix it, is simply file much later than you did and do the right work earlier.
eg, if you are not going to do anything with the patent for almost a year, organize it, build it out, and don't file it until then.
Unless it is time sensitive as you feel it is just a matter of time before others stumble upon the given solution.
Then you have to make that decision of time to file or time to refine. Your choice.
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My name is on two corporate patents, US5,982,862 and US5,815,558. This and a few dollars gets me coffee at the local Starbucks. Patents don't usually make money for big corporations directly, but they're more like trading cards - if a competitor finds one of your products infringing on one of their patents, it's much better if you have a bunch of patents where you can find something about a competitor's product that infringes one of YOUR patents, so you can sign a cross-licensing agreement and forget about it. It looks really bad to investors and such if a company is paying royalties to a competitor, even if it's not much money.
There are indeed a lot of patents that do directly defend a product, service or software that makes a lot of money, but I suspect most patents are "just" part of a corporate portfolio as I describe above.
I really don't believe patents are worth it for a 'regular' individual. If you've got millions of dollars to spare (because that's what it may take to defend against an infringer), go ahead and spend the thousands on a patent attorney to get a good, defensible patent written up.
Otherwise, the best financial outcome would be the example of Robert Kearns, who "did the right thing," got his intermittent-wiper (you've used that, haven't you?) patent and shopped it around the Big Companies who turned him down and then used his idea anyway. He then spent DECADES going after those companies, going far beyond what almost all other individual patent holders would do, and damaging/ruining his personal life on the way:
Robert Kearns - Wikipedia
I recently looked up my corporate patents, and they're expired due to lack of payment of maintenance fees (it costs, I forget exactly, a few hundred every four years to keep a patent in force). Part of that could be the buying and selling of the division I was in, but another aspect is these patents involved POTS ("Plain Old-fashioned Telephone Service") land-line telephone lines, which have been going out of style for decades.
There are indeed a lot of patents that do directly defend a product, service or software that makes a lot of money, but I suspect most patents are "just" part of a corporate portfolio as I describe above.
I really don't believe patents are worth it for a 'regular' individual. If you've got millions of dollars to spare (because that's what it may take to defend against an infringer), go ahead and spend the thousands on a patent attorney to get a good, defensible patent written up.
Otherwise, the best financial outcome would be the example of Robert Kearns, who "did the right thing," got his intermittent-wiper (you've used that, haven't you?) patent and shopped it around the Big Companies who turned him down and then used his idea anyway. He then spent DECADES going after those companies, going far beyond what almost all other individual patent holders would do, and damaging/ruining his personal life on the way:
Robert Kearns - Wikipedia
As I recall, this can save you hundreds of dollars in filing fees - this is a drop in the bucket in the costs of a good patent, and you should be spending many times that on a patent attorney if you're determined to do it. There's a lot of arcane legal language that the examiner will be looking for, and patent attorneys know how to speak it.
I recently looked up my corporate patents, and they're expired due to lack of payment of maintenance fees (it costs, I forget exactly, a few hundred every four years to keep a patent in force). Part of that could be the buying and selling of the division I was in, but another aspect is these patents involved POTS ("Plain Old-fashioned Telephone Service") land-line telephone lines, which have been going out of style for decades.
I have a friend whose father did something similar, it can ruin your families lives as well as your own.
The Journey: A group of us developed a better " mouse trap" 18 years ago. An i prove me on an electronic device with mechnical output for the medical field. The group included experienced biomedical engineering, advertising and sales e excs, ceo's and an MD. 11 of us chipped in 30k each. First step was the patent atty. As we were going up against big guns in the field with their own patents, this was, we felt, mandatory. 4 patents and eight years later with much r&d wr were ready to go. By this time $ was long gone, we found a corporate entity who wanted to fund us, for some of the pie. 3 more years, corporate r&d, study groups, re-engineering firms, prototypes and about $ 1.2 Megabucks more ! Ready to go. No takers. Our idea was not to manufacturer but to sell patents and process. Finally last year sold all patents, prototypes, etc. For about 3 cents on the dollar. Take home. If you have something simple to manufacture, do it, sell it and take the profits. If it is complex or requires government oversight as !Ed devices do, just sell the idea.
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medical devices is a class on its own;
one can see a lot of obvious in the normal world, add implantable to it and it suddenly becomes novel. sofar I did a good 40 patents while working consulting for medical companies. just nice on your CV, that's all .
the more awarding part is seeing your ideas materialize in products that patients actually use.
one can see a lot of obvious in the normal world, add implantable to it and it suddenly becomes novel. sofar I did a good 40 patents while working consulting for medical companies. just nice on your CV, that's all .
the more awarding part is seeing your ideas materialize in products that patients actually use.
Exactly! I have more than a couple to my name, and very, very few actually have been used in a product. Usually, the product gets killed due to non-business and/or non-technical reasons. (Guess...) But, the company values the IP as part of a portfolio. Not enough to shower me with wealth, but they don't shower me with wealth when a product I worked on passes 100 million dollars in sales, either. Waddya do?
As it happens, my kid is a newly sworn in patent attorney. She tells me that most of her firm's clients view IP as you described, too.
If you're an individual inventor, it's a tough spot. Most large companies do not want to hear from you at all - in fact, they want to hear nothing so that they won't later be sued. Smaller companies might try to rip you off. If you start your own company, you and your associates have challenges beyond just the protection of IP.
Now that I look at it, life as an engineer or inventor is kind of bleak, isn't it?
not really, you get your satisfaction from the idea alone, knowing that you did something new. last year I talked to a big inventor at philips. he working on CD's , laserdisk, etc you name it. he may have some 100 patents. now he works at philips medical, and admitted it is far mor rewarding working/inventing in medical.
strangely I see my ideas absorbed by collegues getting into daily products, without any patents. and off course the collegues get the flowers too.. that's what's called competitive environment.
strangely I see my ideas absorbed by collegues getting into daily products, without any patents. and off course the collegues get the flowers too.. that's what's called competitive environment.
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