Patent Filing Process

John was very intelligent and hardworking, He was passionate about automobile and so he was pursuing his master's degree in automobile engineering. He always dreamt of making a super flying car and he indeed designed one. He went to a big automobile company and showed the designs to them. Somehow the deal did not work and he went in search of another company. On the other day, he was shocked to see the advertisement in the newspaper, where the company he approached first, was launching a new super flying car. He knew that this is going to be a big hit in the market but now that the car design no more belonged to him, he could never get the credit for his work, his efforts were in vain, and somebody else was to enjoy the benefit and recognition...his dreams were shattered!!

What should he have done to save or protect his design? He should have filed for patents. If he had gone through the patent filing process, nobody would have used his design without his permission. And if somebody did that, he could have asked for the compensation and the cheaters would have been behind bars. A patent basically means that your creations, new inventions, or ideas cannot be used by others without your permission for a certain period of time. The patent gives you the legal right, wherein the government grants you the monopoly over your creation. It is somewhat similar to copyright and trademarks. Now, if you too want to protect your creation, then file for a patent now.

Patent Application Requirements

According do the US patent law, an object of patent must fall under the five prescribed statutory classes, namely, processes, machines, manufactured items, composition of matter, or any new use of any of these. Secondly, an invention must possess utility, only a theoretical conceptualization is not enough, which means, an idea must be practical and useful. The invention also needs to be novel and original.

Procedures for Applying for a Patent

• At first you need to document the overall information about your invention. It includes issues such as what is the invention about, how you went about inventing it and how viable and useful it is. So you have to describe your invention in detail. It is somewhat similar to presenting a research paper, where you have to make the claims and support it with the required proofs and you should mention the scope of the invention. This entire documented report is known as patent specification. You have to present this patent specification document to the respective patent office.
• Once this document is ready you need to file it for patent as soon as possible, as the right to patent lies with the person who files it first. To file for the patent you need the filing date, that you can get once the authorities at the patent office go through your patent specification document. And if your document complies with their rules and regulations, you are given a patent filing date. You can also be granted some time to make corrections in the document before it is considered final.
• Once the patent application is filed on the filing date, the search is carried out to see if there is any previous patent application done for a related invention. This search report is published within 18 months and if the previous application is found then the current application is dismissed and if not, it goes to the next step. When the previous application is found, the patent office notifies the objection to the inventor. An inventor may choose to argue the objection in the court of law. And if he wins, the application goes to the next level. This search report also helps the inventor to redefine the scope of protection.
• After this, finally when your application is completely accepted by the patent office, you are granted the patent on payment of prescribed fees. The date of issue and the date of infringement is assigned to your invention. The time period between date of issue and date of infringement signifies your monopoly over the invention.

You may wish to initiate the patent filing process, but it is advisable to hire a patent agent, as filing a patent involves complicated details. There are three types of patents, namely design, plant, and utility. The utility patent is further divided in to provisional patent and non provisional patent. All these different types follow similar procedures for applying for patents. But a provisional patent filing process is slightly different from the usual one.

I hope you got a fair idea about the patent filing process from this article. Now gear up to protect your creation and intellectual property. After all, your hard work needs to be credited.