A question about patent application

Unless it's a perpetual motion machine, neither. Your application has to only show "operability". Basically, it can't be obvious that you're violating any fundamental law of the universe. ;=)

Why? It's almost certainly going to result in a waste of money and time.

You don't need anything physical for a patent application, just lots of money to pay someone to write and file the application.

You'd be very wise to look at these tutorials first before you waste your money:

Dave.

Functional prototypes were dropped before any of us were born and proof of concept has been a joke for over 50 years. Hell the whatzits being patented does not have to be useful or practical or even buildable! Have fun wasting your money on a patent - it is only worth the amount you can afford to lawyers in courts. Any big company can effectively steal a patent by making a minor change, pushing a new patent and wiping you out in court using their millions of dollars of "pocket lint". Happened to a company that my dad was a part of.

Or novel, or non-obvious.

The only question USPTO seems to ask is "are your dollars green?".

But a patent is only worthwhile if you have deep enough pockets to defend it against infringement.

Regards, Martin Brown

OK, very negative comments but might be the bitter fact.However, I got a question, what push a big company to buy a small company with so much money? For example, Google to buy YouTube. Why Google just hire a dozen engineers and make some "minor" changes to YouTube?

Johnson

They would be buying the brand and the user base. There are several areas where sufficient critical mass implies a monopoly that is hard to attack. Ebay, paypal, youtube, google, intel, microsoft...

oney?

ers

Gee, anyone use MS Live search? ;-)

Incidentally, patents are very valuable.....for trading in patent lawsuits. ;-)

They are buying the name and the user base. It's got nothing to do with patents. Of course they can just put some programmers on it and come up with their own solution, but people are USED to using YouTube, that's why it's valuable.

Put your money into producing a good product and staying one step ahead of any competitors. Patents will suck your money away and give you no advantage what-so-ever, and that's guaranteed.

It's just like any company can tweak a few things and beat any patent you get, it's so easy and usually cheaper than buying you out. Your only option is to stay one step ahead of everyone else, and that's easy to do in these niche applications.

Dave.

One can easily write their own patent; start with patents on similar devices. File as a small entity; fees are about half of what a corporation would pay (tho still not cheap). Those costs are "pocket lint" compared to court costs if one wishes to defent thsir patent against a theiving large corporation.

Check; forgot those "trivial" items. Heck, the patent can be an almost word-for-word copy of an older patent.

If a big company only wants one or two patented items from a small company, then it seems blatent infringment is the method used; much cheaper than making an offer to buy small company. But if there is a significant technology that can expand the big company's portfolio and (maybe also) products, then buying is the way to go.

Yes, it wouldn't be too hard for those keen enough to save money. A patent attorney's job is to turn your nice and clear description into complete gobledegoop that is technically accurate, but as un-reconstructable and un-readable as possible.

In Australia it's only $70 or so to file an initial provisional claim, and then you get 1 years grace to get your product out the door and making money before having to decide if it's worthwhile to spend the extra dollars to go for the full patent application. IIRC that is in the range of AU$3K for Australia only, or AU$5K if you also want claims in the major countries.

Less than pocket lint!

Dave.

patent.

ISTR seeing an old patent photocopied and used for the new application and it was granted.

=46or an additional 2 more cycles. .