LA Guestlist

Sourcing Los Angeles Culture

Protecting Your Ideas Through Patents – Here’s How to Do it

Having a profitable idea is both an exciting and distressing prospect. On one hand, you’ll be able to generate a lot of money if you capitalize on that idea. But, on the other hand, you’ll be worried that someone might steal that idea and claim it as their own. This is why there are laws that protect such ideas. If you want to protect your product or invention, it is imperative that you learn about the appropriate legal ways to do so. Patent law is a branch of intellectual property law that protects innovations. To learn how you can leverage it to your advantage, check out the following guide.

Utility Patent

Utility patents are used by almost all inventors. It covers new or improved inventions. It also covers ingenious products, machines, manufactured items, or compositions of matter. Utility patents are also divided into chemical, electrical, and mechanical categories, which means that a utility patent will protect how your invention functions. If your idea falls into this category, make sure to submit a utility patent application. However, you must take into consideration utility patents are hard to obtain and are difficult to write. In addition to that, they can be expensive to undertake. Utility patents give the inventors the commercial right to their ideas or inventions for 20 years. One thing you can do to facilitate the filing process is to hire a patent agent or attorney. Depending on the type of your idea or invention filing costs will be anywhere between a few thousands of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.

Design Patent

In addition to protecting your idea, you may want to protect its implemented design. It is easy to imitate an invention or product based on what it looks like, as the size, style, and shape of it can be easily recreated. The specialized patent lawyers at revisionlegal.com/patent-attorneys/ explain that a product doesn’t necessarily have to be functional in order to be considered an imitation of your original design. This, in and of itself, is pure theft of your idea. However, before applying for a design patent, it is highly advised that you check if there are any products or inventions similar to yours that have already been patented. While a design patent has the shortest protection duration (14-15 years), it does not require any maintenance fees, unlike utility patents. Usually, people apply for plant patents in conjunction with utility patents to fully protect their products.

Plant Patent

This is the least used type of patent and the rarest, as not a lot of inventors will go for it. Basically, this patent covers your discovery of unique plants that can asexually reproduce. Thus, the plant patent will give you the complete rights to growing and selling this plant exclusively. The growth and selling of mutant or hybrid species of said plant are prohibited and restricted only to you, the one who discovered the plant and filed a patent. Plants that can be patented might be either natural, bred, or somatic.

They can also be invented; however, the discovery of the plant must be made in a cultivated area in order to qualify for the plant patent. This patent can also name two inventors: the one who discovered the plant and the one who cultivated it. It’s true that a plant patent will give you about 20 years of intellectual property rights, but the patent application is public after 18 months from the filing date, which means that your competitors can find out information about your plant very early. To fully protect your discovery, you’ll also have to apply for a utility patent or a design patent to have full protection.

Look for Existing Patented Products Similar to Yours

As we mentioned earlier, it is best that you look for inventions similar to yours to avoid any patent issues. Even when you’re 100% sure that your idea is unique, you must always make thorough patent research. Note that if your idea has been done before that it can’t be re-patented again. If you’re looking for useful resources for national and international patent databases, make sure to check Espacenet and Patentscope.

Draft an Application

Drafting an application shouldn’t be a difficult process to go through. However, there are a few steps to go implement first to ensure that this process goes correctly. Make sure that you have a written description and illustrations of your invention, an abstract summarizing all the technical aspects of your invention, and claims, which are legal statements that give an accurate description of your invention and its key features.

Knowing the different types of patents and how they work will help you protect your inventions and ideas. However, you should never undergo this process without proper legal guidance from a specialized patent attorney. All forms of intellectual property can be difficult to process. Thus, you must ensure that a patent attorney is always there to assist you whenever necessary.

0

Leave A Comment

Your email address will not be published.