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Investors, on the other hand, do care about patents. This is one reason to keep patents provisional as long as possible - you get the investors to cover the ca
by jwilliams 18y ago
Investors, on the other hand, do care about patents.
This is one reason to keep patents provisional as long as possible - you get the investors to cover the capital outlay of executing the patent.
If you launch into the WIPO "International Patent" process, for an upfront cost (US$5k or so - varies a lot on circumstances) you can extend the process by quite a bit - up to 18 months iirc. My bus partner wrote a blog on this after we'd done rounds of meetings with attorneys : http://www.jodoro.com/2008/09/patent-discussions.html http://www.jodoro.com/2008/09/patent-discussions.html
- mixmax 18y agoSound advice.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- jwilliams 18y ago"Bang for the buck", your US Patent is your best value worldwide. I didn't say you needed to file everywhere - in fact you can't. You get to nominate in the WIPO process which countries you want to execute with. The international examiners also give a lot of good feedback as they have a lot of experience about the individual countries - e.g. This will have problems in EU, but is fine in the US. So if you decide the US is enough, that's fine - if you decide EU, US, AU, JP, that's fine too.
- gravitycop 18y agoSorry, I deleted my comment right after I posted it because I decided I wasn't sure about what you were saying.
- goodgoblin 18y agoThanks for the tip. Right now we are thinking about dropping the whole thing but we'll talk to our lawyer tomorrow and see what kind of wiggle room there is.
- davo11 18y agoIf you'd like to get advice from other inventors there's usually an inventors association nearby. Expect every opinion under the sun, but it may help. Usually there are experienced inventors who donate their time to help out new inventors and just jawbone.
- gravitycop 18y agoYou're saying that you can extend your U.S. filing date [EDIT: what I mean here by "U.S. filing date" is the deadline for filing the actual U.S. patent application] by filing a (essentially international provisional application) PCT? That doesn't sound correct, based on this: http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/foreign-filing-is-it-worth-it.html http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/foreign-filing-i... [EDIT] I stand corrected. Apparently, there is an international (PCT) route to U.S. patents. http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/pct_strategies/the_third_way.pdf http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/pct_strategies/the_third_way.pdf [PDF] the “international route” of the PCT to U.S. patent issuance. [...] THIRD WAY IS BEST WAY This Third Way of using the PCT as a matter of domestic U.S. patenting strategy gains many advantages for the applicant to control the timing of search and examination of the U.S. application, if one begins with a Provisional Patent Application.
- jwilliams 18y agoThe filing date always stays the same (ed: Sorry, I meant priority date there) - but, yes, that's my understanding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty USPTO has a diagram here: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/1800_1842.htm http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/1800_184... Under their system, it the whole process (to what they call the national phase) can be 30months - it varies from country to country, but 30 seems to be common. http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/texts/pdf/time_limits.pdf http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/texts/pdf/time_limits.pdf
- gravitycop 18y agoOK, thanks. I should have checked on this information before posting. Sorry.