Things every client should know about patents

Is it important to file a patent application quickly?

It is.

In many countries around the world, if an inventor publicly discloses his invention or sells devices embodying the invention, then his patent rights in that country are lost instantly and forever.

Fortunately, however, generally speaking, in the United States, an inventor is given a one (1) year grace period from the date of a first public disclosure or offer for sale of the invention in which to get his U.S. patent application prepared and formally filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Thus, if you’ve made any kind of disclosure of your invention, or offered it for sale or commercialized it in any way, it’s important to talk to a registered patent attorney about it as soon as possible so as to ascertain whether some of your patent rights may have been lost.

It’s helpful to note that, even if a public disclosure of v.1.0 of an invention has occurred, important advances that have occurred in the creation of v.2.0 or v.3.0 of the invention may not have been disclosed, so that it may still be possible to obtain patent rights for these more recent (and perhaps more commercially attractive) embodiments of your invention.

Questions about prior public disclosures or commercializations of your invention are an excellent example of a topic you should take up early on when you consult with a patent attorney about filing a patent application for your invention. Why? Because why file a patent application at all if your patent rights are already legally lost? The key is to: (a) gather information early on about precisely what was disclosed or commercialized, and precisely when and how this occurred; and (b) discuss this with a registered patent attorney at the earliest possible time (and do this by telephone as a fifteen-minute telephone call can save you hours of time going back and forth by email).