An inventor explains how to secure legal rights to a new invention: document the idea, confirm it is new, search existing patents, and file with the US Patent and Trademark Office—where a provisional patent offers a low-cost way to test the market.
It is hard enough to grab hold of an idea, and harder still to prove that it is your own and that you thought of it first. Yet if you want to bring your invention to market—maybe even make a fortune from new product sales—staking a legal claim to that idea is exactly what you have to do. As with the race to the South Pole, patenting an invention is all about who gets there first.
Having been there myself, let me offer a little patent help. Inventors can save time and minimize effort—while ensuring full rights and revenues from their inventions—by following these patent tips and guidelines:
- Your very first step is to officially establish a tangible, dated claim to your idea. Write your invention idea out in full detail to provide a written record, then have an independent third party time-stamp and authenticate that record. In the past, you might have relied on a notary public for the most official authentication, and that is still an option today. However, the internet offers an impartial way to do the job reasonably well. Email yourself or a trusted friend the written details of the invention. That email will have an unalterable date. If two or more people apply for the same patent simultaneously, a decision could come down to which party had the earliest documented date of conception.
Your next step is to make certain that your invention idea is indeed a new one. A patent will only be given to an idea for a genuinely new product or a distinct innovation on an existing product. Consequently, your first goal is to scan the marketplace and the patent office records for any comparable idea. The internet can be a real friend here, saving you from wandering around dozens of stores in search of a product similar to the invention you have in mind or in the workshop. Try a few likely keyword strings in Google to see if your invention is already out there. Industry catalogs also offer a quick and easy shortcut, if you can get your hands on them.
You can also conduct your existing patent search from a computer terminal these days. Even if you don't find your invention already out in the world, someone may still have filed a patent for the idea—too recently for it to have reached the production stage, or so long ago that it has been forgotten. Your preliminary internet search may already have turned up potential patents comparable to your invention, but there are also sites that specialize in these records. Pursue those sites as well. Then, as a last step, you can contact the US Patent and Trademark Office, which has its own website. This will be your only source for reviewing pending patents, and it is also the most thorough resource for existing patents.
- Now, at last, you can begin the patent application process through the US Patent and Trademark Office. Filing the application will give your patent claim and your invention patent-pending status, meaning that you can stamp your product with the “Patent Pending” label and safely begin all the work involved in producing and marketing your new invention. You also have the option of filing a provisional patent, which, for a much smaller fee, will reserve the patent in your name for one year while you test the market for the commercial viability of your new product, on your way to a full patent application.
Either way, full patent approval will still take some time to arrive, and it may cost a few thousand dollars to register your final patent. But you have at least won the footrace to stake your claim to the invention.
Patent an Invention
An inventor explains how to secure legal rights to a new invention: document the idea, confirm it is new, search existing patents, and file with the US Patent and Trademark Office—where a provisional patent offers a low-cost way to test the market.
It is hard enough to grab hold of an idea, and harder still to prove that it is your own and that you thought of it first. Yet if you want to bring your invention to market—maybe even make a fortune from new product sales—staking a legal claim to that idea is exactly what you have to do. As with the race to the South Pole, patenting an invention is all about who gets there first.
Having been there myself, let me offer a little patent help. Inventors can save time and minimize effort—while ensuring full rights and revenues from their inventions—by following these patent tips and guidelines:
- Your very first step is to officially establish a tangible, dated claim to your idea. Write your invention idea out in full detail to provide a written record, then have an independent third party time-stamp and authenticate that record. In the past, you might have relied on a notary public for the most official authentication, and that is still an option today. However, the internet offers an impartial way to do the job reasonably well. Email yourself or a trusted friend the written details of the invention. That email will have an unalterable date. If two or more people apply for the same patent simultaneously, a decision could come down to which party had the earliest documented date of conception.
Your next step is to make certain that your invention idea is indeed a new one. A patent will only be given to an idea for a genuinely new product or a distinct innovation on an existing product. Consequently, your first goal is to scan the marketplace and the patent office records for any comparable idea. The internet can be a real friend here, saving you from wandering around dozens of stores in search of a product similar to the invention you have in mind or in the workshop. Try a few likely keyword strings in Google to see if your invention is already out there. Industry catalogs also offer a quick and easy shortcut, if you can get your hands on them.
You can also conduct your existing patent search from a computer terminal these days. Even if you don't find your invention already out in the world, someone may still have filed a patent for the idea—too recently for it to have reached the production stage, or so long ago that it has been forgotten. Your preliminary internet search may already have turned up potential patents comparable to your invention, but there are also sites that specialize in these records. Pursue those sites as well. Then, as a last step, you can contact the US Patent and Trademark Office, which has its own website. This will be your only source for reviewing pending patents, and it is also the most thorough resource for existing patents.
- Now, at last, you can begin the patent application process through the US Patent and Trademark Office. Filing the application will give your patent claim and your invention patent-pending status, meaning that you can stamp your product with the “Patent Pending” label and safely begin all the work involved in producing and marketing your new invention. You also have the option of filing a provisional patent, which, for a much smaller fee, will reserve the patent in your name for one year while you test the market for the commercial viability of your new product, on your way to a full patent application.
Either way, full patent approval will still take some time to arrive, and it may cost a few thousand dollars to register your final patent. But you have at least won the footrace to stake your claim to the invention.
Patent an Invention
By Howtodotips
An inventor explains how to secure legal rights to a new invention: document the idea, confirm it is new, search existing patents, and file with the US Patent and Trademark Office—where a provisional patent offers a low-cost way to test the market.