Posts Tagged: maintenance fees
Weak Chinese Patent Applications and China’s Burgeoning Patent System
Bloomberg recently published an article providing data analysis on Chinese patent applications to claim that, while China receives more patent applications than any country, “most are worthless.” …
Intellectual Property Considerations and Guidance for Start-Ups: Patents
Intellectual property probably isn’t high on the to-do list for most new nonprofits and business start-ups. There’s plenty enough to do with setting up an …
PPAC Fee Hearing Discusses Proposed Increases to Late Payments, AIA Trial Fees
Lisa Jorgenson, executive director of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), asked the agency to better justify the increased surcharge for late maintenance fee payments as …
Investing in Inventing: A Patent Process Primer for Startups
The patent process is long and complex, but well worth the effort if it means protecting your invention and your new company. Key decisions made along the …
Minimizing costs while ensuring foreign patent maintenance fees are timely paid
A few years ago, a clearly irritated client asked me why European maintenance fees were so expensive. Apparently, he had consulted the EPO schedule of fees and …
How the AIA requires the USPTO to be a patent system arms dealer
Not only does the Patent Office handsomely charge for the acquisition and maintenance of a patent, they also handsomely charges for the right to challenge those patents …
Portfolio Management: A Reassessment May Be In Order
For hoarders, once an item comes into their possession, such individuals develop an unreasonable emotional attachment to it. As these possessions, many of which are viewed by …
On the Record with Manny Schecter, IBM Chief Patent Counsel
Whenever there is interesting IBM news of a patent variety Schecter has been gracious enough to make time to chat. The news of IBM's patent supremacy wasn't …
USPTO Proposes Significantly Higher Patent Fees
The recurring theme will be decreased fees for those who qualify for micro-entity status, but increased fees for everyone else. That is great, but micro-entity status will …
Patents World-Wide: Deciding Where to Pursue Patent Rights
The moral of the story is this: First, pick the countries where you want to seek patents wisely, filing obtaining a patent in a country only when …
Reducing the Cost of Maintaining International Patent Rights
It is with great interest that we at Sentry IP read the report the United States Patent and Trademark Office made to Congress earlier this year on “…
Rebutting the Myth that Patents Last Too Long
One of the main criticisms of patents by those who are not intimately familiar with patent law, or on the periphery of the industry, is that patents …
More Work, Less Money for the PTO is a BIG Problem
Something came up in the comments to a post earlier today and I want to address it and definitively debunk the rewriting of history that seems to …