Posts Tagged: "inventor"

Patent Searches: A Great Opportunity to Focus on What is Unique

The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of money preparing and filing an application when there is easy to find prior art that will prevent a patent, or at the very least make any patent that is obtained extremely narrow. Careful review of the patent search report, any opinion or assessment provided by a patent attorney and thoughtful consideration of the patents that are found is critical. Unfortunately, a lot of inventors only give a cursory review of the patents found, thereby missing a great.

A Better Mouse Trap: Patents and the Road to Riches

To paraphrase the famous quote of Ralph Waldo Emerson, if you build a better mouse-trap the world will make a path to your door. Inventors and entrepreneurs frequently take this quote all too literally, thinking that if they make a better product theirs will sell and make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. There are, of course, many different reasons…

Shopping Guide: Holiday Gift Ideas for Inventors

It is that time of the year when we frantically look for gifts for Christmas or Hanukkah.  Christmas comes each year predictably on December 25th, but Hanukkah moves around and this year will start at sundown on December 11th, so time is running short.  With the economy the way it is, extravagant gifts are likely not going to be as…

Rules for Working With a Patent Attorney

This article was written for the United Inventors Association Newsletter and is reprinted here with permission.  Sign up to receive the free UIA weekly newsletter. ******************************** Over the years I have received quite a number of e-mail inquiries and telephone calls from inventors who are looking for information and advice, perhaps even representation. Typically, the initial communication starts off with…

Inventors Beware: Yugo Prices Suggest Yugo Quality

As is the case with all recessions or economic downturns, more and more people are turning to inventing.  This is not at all surprising, and is in fact exactly what you would expect.  When finances are difficult people look to themselves for assistance, and to figure out how they can make a better tomorrow without relying on anyone else.  This…

Wakeboard Inventor Cannot Correct Patent Inventorship

Borden Larson appealed the decisions of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida that granted summary judgment in favor of Defendants-Appellees Correct Craft, Inc. William Snook, and Robert Todd. Larson originally filed suit in Florida state court, alleging multiple fraud-based claims under state law, seeking rescission of several patent assignments he executed and requesting declaratory judgments…

Bad Patent Advice from the Wall Street Journal

In order to stay atop of what is happening in the patent world I subscribe to a Google news service that will send me an e-mail whenever there is a new post relative to patents indexed with Google News.  Most of what crosses through Google News in terms of patent news are short news stories about whatever giant corporation has…

Inventors Need to Have Inventions

I am frequently asked the same or similar question with respect to patent applications by independent inventors — How much information do I have to include in a patent application?  Sometimes this question is prefaced by something like — I have the concept but I am no scientist and I don’t know how to actually create the invention. The first…

Independent Inventors Conference @ PTO

The 13th annual Independent Inventors Conference will be held on the campus of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Alexandria, Virginia August 8-9. A pre-conference workshop, for anyone interested in learning about the basics of patents and the importance of intellectual property protection, will be held on August 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. The workshop is…