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8 Secrets to Patenting Your Invention
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Article 4: Steps For Getting A Patent
There are three major steps in obtaining a patent for your invention.
Step one – Document everything. Accurate records of your invention’s progress should include a written record of your idea even before experimentation or trials. With a complete written description, make drawings and photographs if appropriate of all developmental stages. Records should include all correspondence about the invention, sales receipts for materials and other records that establish facts and dates.
It’s recommended that at least one trusted person, who can understand your invention, corroborate your work by signing and dating your own signed and dated description of the invention. These documents help later if another inventor claims to have come up with your idea first.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) also provides a Disclosure Document Program (DPD) to establish evidence of the conception of your invention, which it will keep for two years, until you file a patent application. The document is destroyed if you don’t follow up. The DDP is not patent protection, but it is evidence dating your invention’s existence.
Step two – Search existing literature and patents to see if your idea is already claimed. A patent search of all existing U.S. patents should be conducted in the early stages either by you or a patent search firm. The USPTO in Alexandria, Va., provides public access to patent information online, in microfilm and print. Computer workstations provide automated searching of patents issued from 1790 to the current week.
Patent and trademark data are searchable on the Internet at www.uspto.gov/go/pats. Inventors also can perform preliminary searches at Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries throughout the country with microfilm and optical discs. To locate the nearest PTDL, visit www.uspto.gov/go/ptdl or call (800) 786-9199.
You are required to establish that your idea is novel and not “obvious,” which means your invention cannot be known or used by others in this country, previously patented in any country, described in a printed publication anywhere or made “obvious,” as that term is described in patent law.
Step three - Apply. A patent application has three parts:
A written description of your invention must be clear enough that anyone skilled in the subject could recreate your idea and use it. Nothing may be withheld. You must name all the essential details that are the operative parts of the invention. You are permitted to prepare your own application, but the USPTO recommends using a licensed patent practitioner. An illustration or drawing showing every feature described. A filing fee.
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