Preissuance submissions
Does a competitor’s patent application look sketchy because it doesn’t cite relevant prior art? Consider filing a “preissuance submission.” Have you found … Read more
Patent Public Search Tool
Want to see what an examiner might find? Try the USPTO Patent Public Search Tool. US patent examiners are a skeptical lot. … Read more
Intellectual property strategy
Optimize your intellectual property strategy by using a combination of patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. In theory, the different categories of … Read more
Utility patents
Utility patents are the best way to protect most inventions. But to get one, you have to convince a USPTO examiner that your … Read more
Provisional patent applications: thoughts and suggestions
Provisional patents, when correctly used, can be used to both quickly and inexpensively attempt to establish that an inventor was first to file. But there can be downsides to taking shortcuts here.
Design patents
For stronger design patents – less detail can give you broader coverage, so consider turning some solid lines into broken lines. On … Read more