Posts Tagged: "famous inventors"

Estimating US patent costs is a difficult matter because so much depends on the technology involved, but answering “it depends” is not particularly insightful or helpful. What follows are some general ballpark estimates, which should give at least some guidance when trying to budget for the filing of a patent application at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

It is important for inventors to understand that there is reluctance among some patent attorneys to take on independent inventors as clients. This is at least in part because some independent inventors take up an extraordinary amount of time and rarely convert into clients. Even if they do convert into clients many want to pay a low rate and are never satisfied.

It is truly a shame that so many have bought into the demonization of patent owners without any critical thought. In order to believe the narrative emanating from certain Silicon Valley giants you would have to believe the existence of helpless multinational, multi-billion dollar companies on their knees and wholly incapable of defending themselves against despicable independent inventors, diabolical universities, and monstrous scientific researchers. After all, looking to find a cure for cancer, or trying to figure out how to clean up the environment, or invent the next great kitchen gadget that will be the darling of QVC by definition makes someone vile, immoral, corrupt and down right sinful! A real devil in disguise!

Incredibly, despite widespread damage to inventors, most staffers still do not understand how the patent system works to create innovation, jobs, and economic growth. They do not understand how patents drive capital to small patent-based businesses thus delivering the vast majority of our new technologies to American consumers. How can it be that they have not heard this perspective? Why aren’t the patent lobbyists in Washington like IPO and AIPLA protecting the patent system? Are the views of inventors so far apart from corporate patent owners? Or are the companies so caught up in other Washington issues that pushing hard for strong patent rights conflicts with other agendas and political asks? Too many Congressional staffers don’t understand the patent system, but staffers are not the ones at fault here.

Large companies can steal your patented technology, make a great deal of money, ignore you all together, and then have the resources, the vast resources in most cases, to delay your enforcement actions or actually destroy your patents by any means necessary. So the only recourse left for me and others like me is to bring suite to protect my invention – my intellectual property rights. However, the loser pay clause in HR 9 would be a showstopper for me. Bringing a suit against a patent infringer would be too much of a risk for me and my family now and I’ve already used my life savings and family inheritance and hard work for over 15 years plus the untold impact on my family just to develop and maintain my patents. I just do not believe the independent inventor is the problem.

A claim drafted too broadly may not be enabled and hence be invalid. Yet, the temptation to claim broadly often leads the patentee to ignore this risk.

On January 20, 2015, I interviewed Fatih Ozluturk, a prolific inventor who has close to 200 patents to his credit and a similar number of patent applications still pending. His inventions have been licensed by every major cellular OEM, and have created over $1 billion in licensing revenue. Today Ozluturk continues as an inventor himself, but he is also now an…

”Even a startup with strained resources can afford to file provisional applications. As a result of the American Invents Act and the fact that the United States is now a first inventor to file country, it is advisable for any company to file provisional applications as soon as they have a meaningful invention and have the ability to put it down in an application and file it. So, that would be the most important advice I can give.”

The 2015 Innovation Festival will be held on September 26th & 27th and will explore how today’s inventors are creating the world of our future. In preparation for the event, the USPTO and the Smithsonian are now accepting applications of inventors interested in exhibiting their inventions at this year’s event.

I continually preach to inventors the need to follow what I call a “business responsible” approach, which is really just my way of counseling inventors to remember that the goal is to not only invent but to hopefully make some money. Truthfully, the goal is to make more money than what has been invested, which is how the United States Congress defined “success” in the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999.

Whether you are an independent inventor, an fledgling entrepreneur or a seasoned inventor who is going out on your own for the first time, the best thing you can do for yourself is to become familiar with the concepts and procedure associated with protecting your inventions. Obtaining patents is not easy for the uninitiated, and without some familiarity you will…

The truth is you cannot patent or protect an idea or a concept. However, it is also an undeniable truth that all inventions start with an idea, but an idea is not something that can be protected by any form of intellectual property protection. Said another way, you simply cannot patent an idea or concept. Similarly, you cannot copyright or trademark an idea or concept. So what do you do when you have an idea? How much is required in order to have an invention?

Without a patent search you will invariably describe all aspects of the invention with equal importance, although we know from experience that there will always be certain features that deserve greater attention because they will contribute more to patentability. While it is helpful to identify any difference between an invention in the prior art, it is critical to spend the greatest amount of time discussing the features and variations that that will contribute to a patent being issued; that is where the patentable invention resides. This uniqueness will allow you to build a patent application that can lead not only to a patent, but a patent that meaningfully protects the core of what makes the invention unique compared with the prior art.

Over the past week the world lost a major name in video game technology, the man who originally developed the entire concept of playing games through a television screen display. Ralph Baer, a 2010 inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, passed away on Saturday, December 6th at the age of 92. From his mind sprang a wide array…