very OT, Patents

SimonAH

Ever filed one? Ever been involved in the process?

I've a blinder of a concept which needs locking down pronto and although I know about non-disclosure etc I have no experience in the process.

Any hints, tips or introductions most gratefully received!

cjcp

I have a feeling this came up about three years ago. Can be quite costly, was one of the messages.

I've no idea about this area.

Clank

It's expensive (tens of thousands), and unless you really beleive you can make a decent earning from the Intellectual Property (IP) in question, then don't go for a patent. Instead, speak to a legal beagle and establish how you can establish 'prior art' on your idea. Prior art offers a level of protection and is a lot cheaper, however, there will be a patent search required to establish that you have indeed invented the prior art. So there is still a cost involved.

Also, once patented, your idea becomes public information. If I know what you do and how, I can find away around it to achieve the same thing (you can't really patent a concept, only the mechanism by which that concept is executed).

I have argued with Daimler, and won, about some of their IP I 'infringe' in work on a daily basis. However, I have tweaked their process (round 1) and established the prior art that their process exploits (round 2). They didn't like it, but life goes on.

We have our own IP department, so I can't really help with contacts at the moment, but I may have some helpful names and contacts in work.

Good luck!

timmyturbo

contact your local chamber of commerce , also filing a stage one patent was made free in about 1999 instead of £800 . !!!

These guys are recommended by chamber of commerce and others . innovate-design.co.uk

First.Aspect

It is possible to get a UK patent for a simple mechanical device for less than £5k. Most of this cost is the time for an attorney to draft a patent specification. Most of the rest of the cost is the time for the patent attorney to politely argue with a patent examiner in Wales.

In the UK, you can prosecute a direct UK patent application to grant in about a year under some circumstances. Usually more like 2-3.

If you want to try to obtain patent protection abroad, it can take 4-6 years (or more), and you only have a year after making a first application (e.g. a UK application) before deciding if you want to try to get patents elsewhere. It is when seeking protection in several countries that the 5 figure costs come in, although costs are spread over several years.

Annuities have to be paid to maintain a patent in force after grant (and in some territories before grant).

In order to get anything from a patent, you have to be quite committed, and normally have a pretty good idea of how you want to commercialise it (licensing, starting a company, selling the invention, etc) before you even start out.

In order to be patentable, a claimed invention has to be new (novel) and inventive. In order to be new, an invention must not have been disclosed to the public in any way, anywhere, before the filing (or priority date) of the application. The novelty requirement is the reason that any disclosures of an invention must be in confidence (preferably a signed NDA), before an application is filed. There are limited exceptions, but disclosing the invention on an internet forum is not one of them.

"Prior art" is the term used to describe anything which could be known to a "skilled person" (a legal construct) in the same technical field ("the art"), before the priority date. The term is used incorrectly earlier in the thread.

If you do it all yourself, it is much less expensive to apply for a patent. Official fees are less than £300 in the UK, but can be much higher elsewhere. However if you do it yourself, every penny will be wasted.

Drafting and prosecuting a patent application is highly skilled and highly specialised. It extremely rare for lay people, including very very bright and capable lay people, to draft an application from which useful protection is available. It might be possible to obtain a patent, and this can of course have a useful deterrant value or marketing value (although a poorly drafted patent by a private applicant is very easy to spot, so even this can be over stated). However even if it is possible to obtain a patent this way, it is usually trivial to avoid infringing it.

Patent attorneys typically have technical degrees, PhD's, some industry experience then around 5-7 years' training before qualifying. Some bloke working at a business advice service who tells inventors that patent attorneys are a waste of money hasn't. Ignore any such people.

If you are interested in patents, either do it right, or don't do it at all. I should add that it is also not worth preparing an appliction yourself and then getting an attorney to prosecute it, so save costs. There's only so much an attorney can do with the subject matter of an application once it has been filed, and many attorneys will not take work of this type on.

Go and talk to a patent attorney. If they do not offer you a brief intial meeting or phone conversation, call another one. (http://www.cipa.org.uk)

As an aside, in my expereince, most private inventors are wisful thinkers. The statement "nothing like this is on the market" is often a prelude to asking a trainee attorney to spend 5 minute on google before drafting a polite follow up email explaining that the invention is available at "American Golf" for $139.99.

Therefore you could save a lot of time and effort by doing some searching now. I hope that's helpful!

First.Aspect

Clank wrote:

It's expensive (tens of thousands), and unless you really beleive you can make a decent earning from the Intellectual Property (IP) in question, then don't go for a patent. Instead, speak to a legal beagle and establish how you can establish 'prior art' on your idea. Prior art offers a level of protection and is a lot cheaper, however, there will be a patent search required to establish that you have indeed invented the prior art. So there is still a cost involved.

Also, once patented, your idea becomes public information. If I know what you do and how, I can find away around it to achieve the same thing (you can't really patent a concept, only the mechanism by which that concept is executed).

I have argued with Daimler, and won, about some of their IP I 'infringe' in work on a daily basis. However, I have tweaked their process (round 1) and established the prior art that their process exploits (round 2). They didn't like it, but life goes on.

We have our own IP department, so I can't really help with contacts at the moment, but I may have some helpful names and contacts in work.

Good luck!

Edit - Select All - Delete.
(No offence)

Clank

First Aspect wrote:

]Edit - Select All - Delete.
(No offence)

None taken!

Just going by my experience with patents in work (making 'em and 'breaking' 'em). We did it 'right' and it was expensive. And in all honesty, mostly pointless in our case!

Really good post you made.

vermin

Just buy a worthless company that owns patent rights. Doesn't matter to what they relate. Then, if a competitor attempts to market a product that is in any way similar to your idea, just sue them in the German courts, on the basis of the competitor's products having infringed your patent rights.

If it's good enough for Apple ...

First.Aspect

Clank wrote:

First Aspect wrote:

]Edit - Select All - Delete.
(No offence)

None taken!

Just going by my experience with patents in work (making 'em and 'breaking' 'em). We did it 'right' and it was expensive. And in all honesty, mostly pointless in our case!

Really good post you made.

I understand the frustration with patents, but the alternative universe without them would be worse. Another post referred to purchasing a worthless company for its IP. Well, with patents, it was worth something. Without them, it was worthless. In fact, there would not have been any point starting it in the first place, because you would know in advance that nothing could be done to prevent a big company from copying anything you do. Trade secrets have their place, but how much use are they for a chemical which can be analysed to find its composition or a device which can be retroengineered? And if everyone was keeping trade secrets instead of patenting, would overall progress be quicker or slower?

As regards your own experience, it is a difficult concept to explain to someone previously unfamiliar with the system, but patentability and freedom to operate are very diffierent things. It is difficult to tell, but it sounds like you may have obtained a patent and been asked to desist making a product embodying your invention, by a larger company with an earlier patent, and that a patent dispute (which you seem to have eventually won) ensued.

And so you are exasperated, understandably, because patent disputes tend to leave no-one happy. Not even attorneys, because they are a hell of a lot of work, not all billable, and your client isn't happy - if he wins he's broke, if he loses he's broke and he's lost. If he wins on some points and loses on others he's broke and confused.

To many inventors, it seems more intuitive somehow to imagine that if you have a patent, you should have the right to use it. Of course if it worked that way, it wouldn't be fair.

Imagine inventing a "safety bicycle". It has bars, pedals, a freewheel a saddle. It is a vast improvement over walking or any of these absurd penny farthing contraptions which people are forever falling from. Fantastic. You can even take the back wheel out and flip it around to go up steep hills.

Then someone comes along a few years later and thinks to put both gears on the same side of the wheel, so you can switch between them by use of a clever little system of levers on the down tube. Why should the later person be able to exploit their invention on the bicycle you invented? It is a little better, sure, but it is still fundamentally your "safety bicycle" with some added features.

The alternative that neither party has a patent (because there is no such thing) is not much good either. You made your invention, cycled past the "Renault" factory and the owner saw it and loved it. He immediately offered you a junior position in the design department, which you still hold, and the company now sells "safety bicycles" in their millions and the owner has an opulent chateau overlooking the river. The new chap with his interesting apparatus for de-railing the chain from one gear to another has absolutely no way to prevent his idea being incorporated into the new models of Renault bicycles, and the brand goes from strength to strength, while the chap who invented the gears now delivers the post using a Renault bicycle with gears. All until a company from China starts importing identical bicycles at half the price and the whole Renault factory goes out of business.

As to the cost of patents... well, it costs at least £30k a year to employ someone. Is £10k a year for a small portfolio of patents really that expensive? How much do a few blackberrys, laptops and a server cost? Why should patent attorney costs be less? Would they have legal qualifications only? Or technical qualifications only? Or be less well trained generally? Do people ask the same of their solicitor (probably, judging by the standards I've experienced), or their barrister? What about their doctor, or their accountant?

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Monkeys are available, but you will only know why you shouldn't have bothered 5 years later when you have to put the patent to work.