Sometimes the quality of your products isn’t your only or main competitive advantage: How you manufacture those products can be just as significant an advantage. Proprietary machinery or processes can help you improve the speed, efficiency, or safety of your production, or help you waste less and reduce costs, or help you create new products. As a patent-seeker or patent-holder in the manufacturing space, you may be inventing technology that you or others use to create much more technology later, in the form of new categories of products, improvements on existing products, or even-better manufacturing processes.
Of course, the manufacturing equipment or process you’ve invented does not help as much if competitors can use what you’ve got to get what they want.
That is where a patent attorney’s experience should come in. Ideally, your patent attorney has an engineering background and experience in manufacturing patents. That is because it’s crucial that your patent attorney understand your invention inside and out, bolt by bolt, before you sink any more money into producing your production capabilities, let alone producing the products they’re meant to make. The earlier we zero in on exactly what is unique about your invention, the sooner you can protect those unique elements and profit from them.
As an Orange County-based patent attorney since 2004 and an engineer before then, I have helped manufacturing inventors apply for and be granted many patents. You can see some of those granted patents here (type “manufacturing” or “machine” in the search feature).
One memorable manufacturing system I helped an inventor get a patent for was a carpet-recycling system that uses water to reclaim the materials and to reduce harmful airborne plastic microfibers. Another was a shrink-wrapping machine that cuts the plastic film to a tighter fit around products, reducing waste and unnecessary expense in the process.
A few examples of manufacturing, machines, and automation patents that I’ve worked on:
- Film edge sealing device (freepatentsonline.com/10000016.html)
- Bag in box beverage pump (freepatentsonline.com/9249792.html)
- Automated drill bit re-sharpening and verification system (freepatentsonline.com/7338344.html)
Do you have an idea or invention for manufacturing equipment or process? If so, would you like to pursue a patent for it, or do you have an existing patent that you need like to defend or prosecute? Contact me, James Yang, for a consultation. I work with inventors throughout Orange County, Los Angeles County, and throughout California and the US, and am confident I can help you with your manufacturing patent. You can schedule a free initial consultation now.
James Yang got us our advanced manufacturing equipment patent. We applied for it in October 2017 and we received it in June 2018. He did an excellent job of expediting the process and overcame some significant challenges to optimize our claims and differentiate our process from existing patents. As James is also an engineer, he understood our process quickly. He is continuing to provide excellent services to protect the patent. – Gail Brice (see review on Google Maps)
Reviews from our clients represent only their experiences and are not a promise of a specific outcome.