Patent Bullying & Fairness

Let’s say some large company really doesn’t like that I have this patent, they can just file an IPR, challenge my patent, and I, who have received this patent, now have to defend this. Is that fair? Uh, well, I guess the, the fairness aspect would be, you have to go back to whether or Read More

Please Keep Your Idea Secret! Part 2

You must be very wary of showing your invention to anyone, even your brother-in-law. Keep it secret for as long as you can, even after you file a patent application. It’s the most conservative way to go. Companies, large companies, don’t have to worry about that. They know that they can flood the market, and Read More

Please Keep Your Idea Secret! Part 1

People are solving problems all the time, especially engineers are solving problems, and we have had actually seminars that we’ve run in corporations where we try to make the engineers cognizant of the fact that what they’re working on to solve a particular problem may actually be patentable, and it should be written up. What Read More

You Have an Idea, What You Should Do Next Part 2

Again, the most conservative advice is to keep it secret for as long as you can. A lot of people can’t do that or don’t want to do that, so then at least file a patent application. The lesser step is at least file a provisional patent application, so at least you can record the Read More

You Have an Idea, What You Should Do Next Part 1

The most conservative advice is to wait until your patent issues before you try to market it. Because what will happen is, when people see it, if they think it’s really valuable, they’ll go to their patent attorney. And their patent attorney will say, this is not patented right now. You can copy it until Read More

The Dangers of Invention Marketing Firms

One must be very careful about not going to so called invention marketing firms because what these people love to do is write up your invention, send it out to manufacturers all across the country or across the world. And what happens then is that you, not being familiar with the patent system, unknowingly have Read More

Patenting and Marketing

You have to be very careful when you market an item, about what names you put on the item. For example, in sports, we have, several clients have had a problem with marketing because they’ll put on University of Miami or whatever it is. And in fact, most of these schools will actually license you. Read More

Is Your Idea Patentable?

We probably get more walk in people with automobile inventions than anything else, and 99 percent of the time it’s been done before. So just like any other product, what we have to do is a search and we have to make sure that it has not been done before. And again, with any other Read More

3D Printing and Patents

Patents cover the making, using, selling, and importation of products and methods used to make those products. In a car, there are thousands of parts. Many of them, of course, are covered by patents. Many of them are not. So, before you go and make something, for example, by 3D printing or any other method, Read More