Another patent Q

Hammerable screws have been around for many years now and they _are_ very useful. This is how you use them: Position the object you want to fix. Drill a hole through the object and into the support in one go and ram in a hammer screw. Very fast, strong and very usefull for f.i. temporarily fixing something as you can easily unscrew it later (if you didn't bend it too much when you hammered it in).

This has probably been patented somewhere somehow, I guess, don't know.

--DF

When the Patent Office did away with mandated working models in 1880, it said there would still be some cases where those would be required; the examples typically given were perpetual motion machines and heaver-than-air flying machines.

For that reason, this is an interesting case: http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:7wI_TNSAoJQJ:patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/03/patents_string_.html+*-patent-examiner-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*+Worsley-Twist-*-*+Mar-24-2005 http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:14HUJKE86-kJ:patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2006/02/pto_requests_mo.html+*-*-*-*-*-*-working-model

(The story is from March 2005 but it was given new life recently when it was posted to Slashdot.) USPTO Requests Working Model

I know about most of them. However, I used it as a general case of something that would have wide applicability across industry.

Dirk

No, that would be a copyright. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

-- Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073 Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552 rss:

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at

That's the common "wisdom" in some parts. However it's far from the truth. I have an "office action" with all claims denied, sitting on my desk. Someone else submitted the basic idea, while our lawyers were off playing with themselves. They snoozed, I loozed. :-/

I have heard enough elsewhere to make me feel confident that you have up to 1 year after first sale or public use/demonstration of an invention to file a patent application. I don't know if that includes provisional applications, though.

Also, USA has some rule of "first to invent". You can ruin a competing patent filed earlier than yours if you can prove that you had the invention before the competitor did.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

If I was to patent a AG drive:

Case 1 I was writing the patent application, Case 2 I had a patent attorney do this.

Case 1: I know well enough about writing patent applications to disclose useful applications and useful "extensions" and variations of the invention, so as to either be able to claim or to at least keep a competitor from patenting.

Case 2: If I don't know that well, then I had better have a patent attorney do this, and any patent attorney failing to do this I should fire for not serving my interests.

=========================

Now here is something I have been told:

Suppose I invent some superior cushion for a bar stool, and I could not find much of a market for only cushions but I could find a market for bar stools with cushions. But someone else has a current patent for the cushioned bar stool (or maybe bar stools in general). What happens? I can get a patent for my superior cushion, and even for bar stools with this superior cushion. But I can't sell bar stools with this cushion without negotiating an agreement with the other inventor that has the bar stool patent!

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

In the US, this is the case. One is barred from pattenting a widget one year from disclosure or other "commercial advantage". Commercial advantage may be an offer for sale of something using the invention (either in the device itself or in the manufacturing process) or disclosing the invention to a customer. Europe and Japan have no one year period. Once disclosed you're barred from a patent.

I don't believe this is true anymore, but could be wrong here. It's first to file now. If you hold something as a trade secret I believe someone else can patent the invention out from under you. IIRC the US changed this when they went from a 17 year patent (from date of issue) to 20 years (from date of file).

This is exactly what happens. As was mentioned previously in this thread, a patent is a negative instrument. It gives no right to the holder, rather takes a right away to everyone else. The other inventor has taken away your right to make bar stools and you've taken his right away to make your superior cushion. Maybe the two of you can swap licenses for bar stools and cushions and both can make money excluding everyone else from making such a superior product?! This is exactly how industry works; The lawyers sit around the poker table and trade stacks of patents (sometimes along with cash).