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Why it costs so much money to file an Application In practice, the art of preparing a properly-written patent application is one that takes years to acquire. Most Patent Offices advise inventors to seek professional assistance in preparing a patent application. In many cases in which an inventor does not obtain proper professional assistance, the patent application prepared by the inventor is so inadequate that it cannot be salvaged later, even with professional assistance, and must be abandoned. Abandonment results in loss of filing date and the risk that in the intervening time, prior public use, sale or publication of the invention may have occurred, or that a competing inventor has filed an application for the same or a similar invention. Any of the foregoing may invalidate a subsequent reworked patent application. Since the first examination of a patent application may not occur until a year or more from its filing date, the inventor may not realize until too late that the patent application is hopelessly inadequate or invalid. All chances of obtaining valid rights to the invention may have become needlessly lost because the inventor did not retain a qualified patent practitioner in the first instance. Even when the professional adviser is very skilled, the effort required to draft a suitable patent specification and claims is very time-consuming. If you've never seen a patent specification, make a point of having a look at one. Many libraries have collections of patents, or we can show you some of the ones we've drafted (the granted ones, of course - applications that are still pending are kept secret, and it goes without saying that we treat all of our clients' affairs with the utmost confidence). The claims are the numbered statements at the end of the patent specification. Their formulation is very important, because they define the exclusive right that is granted to the patentee. If they define an invention too narrowly, then a competitor may avoid infringement by avoiding some of the details in the claims while making use of the general principle underlying the invention. On the other hand, if the claims are drafted too broadly, they may cover, in addition to the invention, something previously known (exactly or approximately) or something that is not useful or does not achieve the advantages specified for the invention, or they may be ambiguous. Any of the foregoing defects will in many countries invalidate the claims. So we have the exacting task of defining the invention in the claims with enough particularity that they withstand attacks on their validity but also with enough breadth that they cover all the variants that might occur to a competitor. |
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here written constitutes legal advice. The accuracy of what is written
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