Provisional patent applications are lower cost, but not cheap Provisional patent applications are frequently misunderstood, and in my opinion, misused.  Oftentimes, provisional applications are thought to be the poor man’s patent or the cheap patent.  However, the provisional patent application is merely a lower cost option as best described by the United States Patent and [...]

Non Publication Requests A non publication request is a request by the patent applicant to not publish a non provisional patent application.  By default, every non provisional patent application is published 18 months after the filing date of the patent application.  The non publication request prevents the publication. Benefit of publication The benefit of publication [...]

Once a patent application is filed, it receives a priority date for all that it discloses and nothing more. The inventor can claim anything within the disclosure as being a part his or her invention. If the inventor wants to claim an invention that varies from the disclosure, then the claim language must be generalized so as to encompass the variation but cannot be shifted unless the original disclosure provides “written description” of the claimed variation. Otherwise, the claim will be invalid for lack of “written description” in the specification.

Under U.S. patent laws, a patent application must be filed within one year of first publicly using the invention, offering the invention for sale or distributing a printed publication. The following case illustrates an example of a device that was not used in public view but still considered to be a public use. In New [...]