Item 1476
DESIGN: Electrotor_Plus
~ MRGA - Patent - Patent Related
General Information Related to Patents:
Postings by WaspAir on Rotary Wing Forum ~ January 28, 2009:
Originally Posted by Rotor Rooter
There are three (or more) options that you can consider;
2. and 3. will allow you one year to apply for a full patent, should you wish to. Both will make it theoretically impossible for another to patent the same idea. .
This is close, but not quite right for U.S. patents. Under U.S. law, for option 2, there may already be an application on file by someone else, or one may be filed by someone else before your application is published, that establishes a contest as to who was really the first to invent. The patent goes to the first to invent, not the first to file. For option 3, there are two possibilities that can change the outcome. First, somebody may already have an application on file, in which case your broadcast on the internet has no effect at all. Second, the one year grace period in which to apply for a patent that starts with your broadcast doesn't apply to just you; anybody can apply in that same time frame if they have a credible claim to having invented the same thing before your broadcast; they can "swear behind the reference", and get the patent. After one year, if nobody has applied, nobody can get a patent for it.
Information looked up; Definitions of Terms
Originally Posted by Rotor Rooter
".... as to who was really the first to invent."
It appears that this 'first to invent' is in reality 'the first to; submit the application to the Patent Office or put the information into the public domain, where it is available to others in the same field as the subject.
No, that's not how it works. I don't want to detour the whole thread, but the U.S. system differs from almost the entire rest of the world in critical ways, and this is a big one. "First to invent" really means what it says. Filing date / publication date are only evidence of invention; they don't determine who gets the patent. There is even a procedure called an "interference", in which applications pending at the same time for the same invention are considered, and each inventor submits his proof of conception date and so-called "reduction to practice" date for the patent office to sift through; the first to file can lose when that happens.
Here's an example of what the statutes say about this issue, picked to suggest how complicated the determination can be:
"In determining priority of invention under this subsection, there shall be considered not only the respective dates of conception and reduction to practice of the invention, but also the reasonable diligence of one who was first to conceive and last to reduce to practice, from a time prior to conception of the other." 35 USC 102(g)(2).
In one case about ten years ago, that "diligence" evidence alone took me several days to present in court.
Most other countries don't mess with this - first to file gets the patent - but in the U.S. it's considered a Constitutional requirement to give it to the first inventor, not the first to win the race to the patent office. There's always pressure from international organizations to change it, but the Constitutional requirement is a big stumbling block.
Postings by WaspAir on Rotary Wing Forum ~ October 11, 2009:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Rotor Rooter showthread.php?p=323308 - post323308 showthread.php?p=323308 - post323308
|
There's actually an official (but cumbersome) way to do this sort of defensive publication, called a Statutory Invention Registration, that works to prevent others from getting a patent but doesn't get you one. I've done this for some corporate clients. It's too pricey for what you have in mind. If you manage to keep an application alive on the cheap, without abandonment for failure to respond or to pay any other fees, long enough to get it published by the PTO (usually 18 months), then the published application becomes a good reference. You can get voluntary publication earlier if you wish, but there's a $130 fee for that as I recall.
Publishing anywhere is equally legally effective. Practically speaking, having something in the PTO's own publications, unfortunately, doesn't necessarily mean that an Examiner will find it without your help when a later application that looks similar comes along. If the feature in question is not described in similar terminology in the Abstract, or if the feature is one of several mentioned somewhere in the body of your disclosure but not the most prominent one, or if there is a difference in how the material is classified because of the nature of the claims involved, things can be missed more easily in searching than you might think.
Information Related to This Specific Application Consideration:
Related Gyroscope Patents:
Related Hub Spring Patent:
More Related Patents:
Related Patent Applications:
References to Related Patents:
|
|
PAT. NO. |
Title |
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
More Info on Patents ~ At this Site:
Introduction Page | SynchroLite Home Page | Electrotor Home Page | UniCopter Home Page | Nemesis Home Page | AeroVantage Home Page:
Last Revised: October 11, 2009