Re: What\'s invovled in getting a Patent???
Eddie – if you really want to patent your idea - Don’t tell us what it is, and stop writing / hinting about it.
Some other things to consider:
PRIORITY DATE AND PRIOR ART
Every patent application is afforded a “priority date” by each patent office in which it is filed. Generally, this priority date is the date on which the patent application is first filed in any patent office. Most countries have agreed that as long as the same patent application is filed in different patent offices within one year of its first filing in any patent office, each of the different patent offices will assign the application a priority date identical to the first filing date. The priority date is important because it is used by the respective patent offices to determine “prior art” for the patent application.
Prior art includes all publications (e.g., research articles, posters, product literature, etc.) and other information (e.g. sales of the invention, spoken presentations, product demonstrations, etc.) publicly available before the priority date of a patent application. In evaluating a patent application, a patent office collects and reviews the prior art with relation to the invention presented in the patent application. Because prior art is based on the patent application’s priority date, it is important for all inventors to establish the earliest possible priority date for their inventions; and, it is imperative to apply for a patent (i.e., obtain a priority date) before any public disclosure of an invention. If an inventor publishes information about the invention before filing a patent application (i.e., obtaining a priority date), patentability of the invention can be significantly compromised or destroyed entirely because the inventor’s publication will be considered prior art against his or her own patent application. (With this said the patentability of your invention might already be toast).
THREE PATENTABILITY CRITERIA
The three international criteria for a patentable invention include novelty, inventive step, and industrial applicability, and all of these criteria are measured using the prior art available prior to the priority date for the given patent application. Although the majority of patent offices make patentability decisions independently of other patent offices, each patent office evaluates patent applications using these same three criteria of novelty, inventive step, and industrial applicability in generally the same ways.
“Novelty” of an invention relates to its uniqueness with respect to the prior art. An invention described in a patent application may be rejected by a patent office as not novel if, for example, a single prior art publication or publicly available product describes or includes all elements of the invention with sufficient detail to allow a person (with experience in the applicable scientific field) to understand the entire invention without having to read the patent application. If the patent office cannot find a single prior art description or product showing all elements, the invention in the patent application may be deemed novel.
“Inventive step” is known in some countries as “non-obviousness,” and relates to the originality of an invention with respect to the prior art. A patent application must describe an invention that is both novel and non-obvious. When a single piece of prior art almost describes the invention, or when two or more pieces of prior art can be combined to nearly or fully describe the invention, a patent office may contend that the invention lacks inventive step or is obvious with respect to the prior art. Lack of inventive step, or obviousness, is the reason most often cited by patent offices for rejecting a patent application, and nearly all patent applications are initially rejected for at least this reason. A patent office’s determination of lack of inventive step or obviousness, however, cannot be based on a hindsight reconstruction, and therefore, it is not enough that one could look back on the prior art after having read the patent application to derive the invention. The inventive step or non-obvious criterion is the most difficult to articulate as it is factually driven using legal criteria for obviousness that are distinct from typical definitions of obviousness used outside of patent examination.
The last criterion for patentability, “industrial applicability” or “utility”, requires that an invention have a use. Any invention for which a use can not be determined will be rejected, regardless of its novelty or inventive step. Utility rejections are seldom if ever applied to electrical or mechanical inventions.
