Document Your Invention...
It is relatively easy to provide
yourself with documentation that will stand up in a patent court if
the need arises, and in the last analysis, even
if you are granted a patent, your initial documentation
is extremely important in the case of a later patent dispute.
The following procedures provide excellent protection. You should
never sign a disclosure agreement until you have at least the
following level of documentation:
An additional level of protection is afforded by a
"provisional patent", a service offered by the United States Patent and
Trademark Office since 1995. Filing a provisional patent is inexpensive and,
although it does not offer any actual patent protection, it establishes the
precedence of the material that you submit. If you subsequently file for a
regular patent, the filing date of the provisional patent can be used to help
establish your claim over a competitor. For more information about this
important new option, read the USPTO web page dealing with provisional
patents.
Paperwork:
Obtain a bound notebook
with consecutively numbered pages. These are often referred to as "inventors" or
"engineers" notebooks and come with grid paper so that drawings or graphs can
easily be made. Starting with the first page, and leaving no page blank,
describe the invention, together with any diagrams, data, equations or photos
that are required to make it understandable. Large blankareas of the page should
be crossed out so that someone won't claim that you added material at a later
date. At the bottom of each page, there should be a field which says: "Read and
understood by:", and a place for a date. A rubber stamp with these words is
a good way to do this. Then, the entries must be read by someone who can
understand what you have done, and the fields must be signed and dated. The
person who signs MUST be able to understand it, and hopefully be able to say
what he or she understood if court testimony is ever called for. Therefore,
don't be tempted to use someone simply because they are convenient - make sure
they understand what you did.
Persistence:
If two separate parties apply for the same invention, the ultimate
ownership goes to those who first came up with the idea [In the US
- in Europe, it goes to who files first]. This is where the concept
of persistence is important. If you write up an invention
description and then do nothing to enable it for a time, while
another party starts later but persists and finishes before you do,
the patent office can consider that you "abandoned" your invention
and give the ownership to the late starter. The moral here is not
to sit on an invention too long, particularly if it is in an
evolving field, or your rights may be lost to others
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