Getting a patent is an essential legal step for anyone who has created an invention, and finding a patent attorney can help to considerably speed up and ease the process of getting one’s paperwork cleared. After all, intellectual property practice is something taken seriously, and any inventor would be well advised to carefully learn how the patent process works in terms of intellectual property practices and choose among available patent attorneys to get legal help for this. The quest to obtain a patent begins not with completing the invention itself, but starting the paperwork with the patent office, and often, contacting a patent law firm to find patent lawyers who can help out. With a lawyer’s assistance and a solid knowledge of intellectual property practice in the United States today, an inventor can get his or her paperwork done correctly the first time and get the desired results.
On Patents
The first patent law was used over 228 years ago, and a survey shows that patents are strongly used across 12 or so industries. And in those 12 industries where patents are used to good effect, 50% or more of inventions that satisfy the criteria of becoming patented are patented successfully. This is a busy industry; the USPTO receives some 500,000 patent applications every single year, and not all of them will end up being accepted. What can an inventor do with intellectual property practice to make sure that their paperwork is done right?
According to Legal Zoom, there are five general steps that any inventor can go through to get their patent’s application accepted, and the first of these steps is simply to understand the invention itself. This means knowing what aspects of it make it new and useful, and consider the scope of it; that is, see if there are other ways to build that invention to make it even more effective and practical. The inventor should also evaluate whether the invention has a sufficiently broad application to be used.
The next step is researching the invention and others like it to make sure that it is not redundant with other items like it, and that there will be need for it and that it does not violate intellectual property practice. Now, the inventor may apply for and file a provisional patent, meaning that they are still finalizing their invention’s design, and this provisional patent is valid for one year (it is not a permanent patent, as the general term “patent” refers to). This is a good option as long as the inventor does not actually add new components to their invention, only modify existing parts. Drafting a patent application is tricky, even for just a provisional patent application, and a lawyer can be very helpful for this to make sure that all details are just right. An improper application will be rejected and can cost a lot of time and money for the inventor.
Finally, after the patent application has been submitted, the inventor is free to begin work on other projects or to contact potential buyers or business partners about it, since the inventor does not have to wait idly until the patent is accepted (especially since this can be a year-long wait). Time can be more efficiently managed by pursuing other work in the meantime, whether it’s a provisional or a more permanent patent application being filed.