HOW TO PATENT PRODUCT US

When inventors talk about patents, they're usually referring to a utility patent. This is because utility patents cover the most common categories of innovation. As the name suggests, utility patents are awarded to inventions that produce some sort of result (as opposed to design patents, which protect purely artistic or ornamental designs).

For your invention to qualify for utility patent protection, it must fall into one of the following categories of subject matter:

* Machines, which are generally composed of moving parts (like a computer or an engine)

* Articles of Manufacture, which generally resemble objects (such as a soap bar or bolt)

* Processes, which are stepwise methods (including software, social networks and semantic networks)

* Compositions of Matter, which include compounds and mixtures (such as man-sequenced genetic products and pharmaceuticals)

Many inventors have flocked to provisional patent filing as a low cost way to get “patent pending” status on their inventions. Advantages of Provisional Patent Applications include the following:

• Protect the invention for early commercialization.

• Establish an official United States patent application filing date for the invention.

• Preserve the application in confidence without publication.

• Enable simplified filing with a lower initial investment with 12 months to assess commercial potential before committing to the higher cost of filing and prosecuting a non-provisional application for patent.

• Allow "Patent Pending" claim on products/services covered by the invention.

However, the common perception that provisional applications represent a low-risk, quick and easy way to obtaining a priority date with minimum effort is incorrect.

The provisional application will not mature into a granted patent without further submissions by the inventor: the provisional application automatically becomes abandoned when its pendency expires 12 months after the provisional application filing date by operation of law. You must file a non-provisional application (such as a utility patent application claiming benefit of the provisional application filing date before the 12 month period expires in order to preserve any benefit from the provisional-application filing.
Also, if your invention is "in use" or "on sale" (see 35 U.S.C. §102(b) ) in the United States during the 12 month provisional-application pendency period and if you miss the the 12 month deadline to file a corresponding non-provisional application, you may lose the right to ever patent the invention due to your own use or sale of the invention.

Proper provisional applications take as much efforts as utility applications. Incorrectly prepared provisional applications may provide inventors with a false sense of security and may cause problems if inventors rely on incorrectly prepared provisional applications in publicly disclosing their inventions. To ensure that your patent application is properly drafted, a patent attorney should be hired to conduct the drafting. We recommend that you talk to professionals such as the patent law firm of Tran & Associates if you have questions.