Posts Tagged: "provisional"

Patent Pending: The Road to Obtaining a U.S. Patent

The term patent pending is a well recognized term of art that many inventors rightfully covet. It subtly, and very directly, conveys great meaning. It means that an inventor has taken steps to protect their invention in hopes of ultimately obtaining a patent. It also conveys to consumers the aura of innovativeness. Of course, patent pending status is just a stop on the road to obtaining a U.S. patent.

Federal Circuit affirms PTAB invalidation of Uniloc patent which wasn’t invalid in 65 district court cases

The Uniloc patent invalidated by the PTAB in this case is U.S. Patent No. 5490216, titled System for Software Registration and issued in February 1996. It claims a registration system for licensing execution of digital data in a use mode, the system including both local and remote licensee unique ID generating means, and a mode switching means operable on a platform which permits the use of digital data only if the locally-generated licensee unique ID matches the remotely-generated licensee unique ID. The innovation solved issues in prior art systems for software registration for software transferable by physical media which used shell programs or did not utilize information unique to the intended licensee which is distinguishable from the identification of the platform. According to data collected from Lex Machina, Uniloc’s ‘216 patent has been asserted in 65 cases filed in U.S. district court going back to September 2003.

There is no such thing as a provisional patent

Although there is a popular misconception among inventors new to the field of inventing, the United States Patent and Trademark Office is never going to grant a provisional patent. A “provisional”, as it is sometimes called, is a type of patent application. A provisional application for a patent can be filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in order to establish priority of invention, which is critically important given that the United States is now a first to file country. Although the U.S. is not a pure first to file country it is safest for inventors to assume that first to file laws do set up a race to the Patent Office. Therefore, it is essentially in virtually all cases for an inventor to file a patent application first — before anyone else who may also be working on the same invention. This is where a provisional application for a patent can be extremely useful.

Invention to Patent 101 – Everything You Need to Know to Get Started

This page and website contain contain detailed information to help inventors on the road from invention to patent… Below are a sampling of inventor help links to specific patent and invention related information throughout our website. As you read these articles you will invariably come across links to other articles of interest, which you can and really should read. While I believe inventors should take the time to read all of the pages throughout IPWatchdog.com, I have gone through the IPWatchdog.com archives and created several “reading assignments,” which will hopefully make the task of figuring out where to start more manageable, and which will help get you started. I recommend you do them in this order (i.e., starting with Reading Assignment 1), but if you find something that you just need to know then by all means jump ahead. You can also visit our Inventor Education Archive as well.

The AIA’s First-to-File Transition SHOULD have Resulted in More Provisional Filings

To investigate whether applicants have been adopting a strategy of filing more provisional applications, we determined a ratio of the number of provisional filings (with a first-named inventor identified as being a resident of the U.S.) relative to the number of utility filings (with a first-named inventor identified as being a resident of the U.S.). As shown in Figure 2, this ratio also exhibited an uptick in fiscal year 2013, but the ratio has since returned to Fiscal-Year-2012 levels. Thus, this data suggests that applicants have generally not changed their filing strategies to file more provisional applications in view of the AIA’s change to define prior art based on applications’ filing dates.