Patent applications possess priority claims to couple them to other patent applications. This often arises when a non-provisional utility patent application claims priority to a provisional application. The provisional application is a “temporary” filing but can establish a filing date…
The Patent Office charges fees for receiving and processing patent applications. It levies filing, search, and examination fees for all non-provisional design patent applications and utility patent applications. These fees vary depending on whether the applicant is large, small, or…
A late US national stage entry, from a PCT international application, is one way a US or international applicant can obtain patent protection in the US. Patent applicants can seek patent rights outside their home country through a few mechanisms. …
The Patent Office is relatively generous when it comes to tolerating accidents in patent applications and patents. Revival of a PCT application is more difficult. Patent applications can sometimes go abandoned when an applicant fails to submit a reply or…
When does a patent application require an inventor’s oath or declaration? Well, almost always. Only the inventor or inventors of an invention may file for a patent application claiming the inventive subject matter. “A person shall be entitled to a…
The Patent Office has raised many of its fees. The Office attempted to soften this fee increase by explaining that it is the first raise in almost three years, it nevertheless comes in the midst of a pandemic where many…
Sometimes a prospective client calls in need of help prosecuting his or her patent application. Sometimes, the caller informs me that they wrote the patent application themself (a “pro se applicant”), that it has been rejected, and that they now…
A patent must identify the correct inventors. A patent which names the wrong inventors can be invalidated. Sometimes, friends and spouses want to identify each other to be nice, but a person is only an inventor if they have contributed…
Aaron Moncur of Pipeline Design & Engineering recently interviewed me for his podcast Being an Engineer. We talk a little about my early engineering time, but mostly about the transition from engineering to law and the basics of patent protection. Please…
The scope of protection of a design patent is defined by the drawings presented therein. In that way, design patents can often seem like a very simple or straightforward form of protection: show some drawings in an application, file it,…