I need to patent a process!

[RabidMongoose]

Originally posted by: Roger
No one can copy your invention/process for seven years without paying you royalties.

I think that it's usually 17 years.

 

[Hooobi]

Had to bump this old thread back up because of all of the misinformation on here.

First off, the current patent term on a utility patent is 20 yrs from date of filing.

You can do it yourself, and there are some decent layman's guides such as "Patent It Yourself" which was actually recommended material for the patent agent exam at one point.

However, if you can afford it, you're usually better off engaging the services of a professional. Using a patent attorney will typically cost anywhere from $5-15k for a utility app.

It usually takes 18-24 months from date of filing before you hear from the PTO. Typically, the entire process takes about 2-3 years. There is no guarantee that you will actually get a patent.

Also, as someone mentioned earlier, a patent doesn't give you the right to actually do anything, but the right to exclude other from doing what is claimed in your patent.

 

[jadinolf]

Originally posted by: PhasmatisNox
My dad got a patent. It cost about $6000 for a patent lawyer, although I have the feeling that he got pwned.

From my experience that is the going rate.

 

[Atomicus]

Albert Einstein: "This Theory of Relativity is interesting.... Oh, whats this spot here?"
*slams security cage repeatedly onto applicant's head*

*sigh* I love Family Guy

 

[CanOWorms]

I think it's supposed to be harder to patent a process because processes go through a second level review, so you might want to get a patent lawyer instead of doing it yourself.

 

[SuperTool]

I don't think it's that easy to do it yourself. I think I had about 10 pages written for an idea I patented through the company, but after translated to legalese, it was 50 pages.
Even with the lawyer doing it, it took time to review stuff and send him feedback. I have a couple other things that I am not yet patenting because I am busy.
Make sure it's worth doing, that others can't just get around your patent by doing something a little different, etc. Most patents aren't economically useful, which is OK if the company wants to pay for it just to beef up its portfolio. But it's a problem if you have to pay out of pocket.

 

[sonambulo]

Originally posted by: badmouse
The four-year wait for a patent is a great thing, because "patent pending" is equally good protection - in fact, it's better protection than an actual patent because you don't have to disclose anything. A patent, once approved, is released to the public.

Is there any way to look at a patent app while it's pending? basically my situation is this: homeboy's got a patent pending stamped on all of his products. they're pretty much a monopoly in a niche (read:embarrassing) market. i need to see what he's got patented so i can develop a workaround but he's being tightlipped. what can i do?

 

[viking1966]

one way to protect your idea while you go through the process is to mail yourself the plans and never open it.. this way you have a government post/stamped and data record of your idea that will hold up in court if someone tries to steal your idea..

 

[sonambulo]

from what i understand there's a test or tests to determine of a product is a new and unique piece. anyone know where i can find this test?

 

[Hooobi]

If the application has been pending for at least 18 months, there's a good chance it may now be published. You can search for it by going to the PTO website www.uspto.gov and searching patent applications (not patents).

Originally posted by: sonambulo

Originally posted by: badmouse
The four-year wait for a patent is a great thing, because "patent pending" is equally good protection - in fact, it's better protection than an actual patent because you don't have to disclose anything. A patent, once approved, is released to the public.

Is there any way to look at a patent app while it's pending? basically my situation is this: homeboy's got a patent pending stamped on all of his products. they're pretty much a monopoly in a niche (read:embarrassing) market. i need to see what he's got patented so i can develop a workaround but he's being tightlipped. what can i do?

 

[Hooobi]

Originally posted by: viking1966
one way to protect your idea while you go through the process is to mail yourself the plans and never open it.. this way you have a government post/stamped and data record of your idea that will hold up in court if someone tries to steal your idea..

I don't believe that this is considered an effective method of establishing date of invention anymore. A better way is to have two or more witnesses sign and date a description of the invention with a statement explaining that they understood the invention and that it was divulged to them in the strictist confidence on that date.

 

[Hooobi]

Originally posted by: sonambulo
from what i understand there's a test or tests to determine of a product is a new and unique piece. anyone know where i can find this test?

I've never heard of such a test. There is however a way of getting an idea of what else is out there. It's called a prior art search and any patent professional can probably conduct one for you. You can even do a rudimentary one yourself by searching for your invention on the USPTO website and you can also google it to see if there is any mention of it online.

 

[Mallow]

Thomas Edison has more patents than anyone in history.

 

[axelfox]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: theNEOone

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: theNEOone
what does your process accomplish?


=|

It stops a degree of spam, accurately.

hmm, that's cool. my school does spam blocking/filtering based on hundreds of rules, assigns a weight to each of these rules, and then finally determines that likelihood that a particular e-mail is spam. if it's more than 50% likely that the e-mail is spam, it adds a tag to the beginning for the sujbect [PMX:###] to indicate that it's spam, with each "#" indicating an extra 10% probability that the e-mail is spam. (therefore, the above example indicates an 80% chance that the email is spam). then through outlook you can add a simple rule to filter out these e-mails based on percentage. i have really relaxed rules - i'm filtering at 50% probability. the rules are damn good, so far i get 100% spam blocking, and maybe 1-2% false positives. i can probably increase the outlook rules to filter out only 60-70, and i might get rid of the false positives, but it works so well that i think that i'll just leave it as it is.

here's some possible competition. my school uses PureMessage


=|

My antispam method is only complimentary, I don't think it would work well by itself.

What your school is using, PureMessage, is a bayesian algorithm designed by ActiveState which was recently acquired by Sophos.

The difficulty with bayesian is that there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of tokenized rules. The value of each token is adjusted based on email traffic. This is known as "bayesian training". Unfortunately, where this succeeds as a desktop solution, fails as an enterprise solution. When you have 500 employees, each within departments of different themes, the bayesian loses effectiveness while increasing false positives.

Another problem with Bayesian is that spammers quickly identify the rulesets, and use their own tokenizing software to counteract it. It's war of the algorithms. That's why lately you see emails that use non traditional characters in their content, or a dump of an excerpt of some book, or no text at all and just load an image via html.

Well, duh :sun: