It’s amazing how much
information is available on the process of patenting. Use any
internet search engine available and you will get millions of hits for
the word patent. The content of those hits is very diverse
and sometimes misleading. Depending upon what you are looking for and
the information given to you, it’s easy to wrongly bias your
opinion of what it all means. Let me sight a specific
instance I just read today.
While searching for articles
pertaining to why you should file a patent on your own, I stumbled
across an article written almost two years ago. The
summary of the article stated the author tried to file a patent without
an attorney and it was a huge mistake. It
also stated they were not an attorney and wished they had gone about it
differently. This caught my
attention, so I choose to read on.
As the
article unfolded, it became clear to me why the author of the article
felt the way they did. They did not
prepare for the task of filing a patent. They
were working with a friend who was an attorney and it was apparent that
the attorney was too busy. Not only
did this attorney blow off his client, they clearly did not want to
work on the project of patent application writing.
In the end,
the author / inventor, struggled through writing a real patent
application (RPA) and sent it to the United States Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO) by themselves. A few
months later, they were disappointed with a first office action that
required a response. Then, they
chose to sit on the office action until the last minute,
didn’t file a response in the required time allotted, and
ended up having to pay fees for filing the response late.
So in their opinion, they did not
believe it was smart to patent without legal help.
I was upset by what the author had
surmised.
It
was clear to me why the inventor had such a hard time. They
were not properly informed about the patent process. Not only
were they ignorant of the process, they relied on a friend, who was an
attorney for help. It gets better; the attorney was working
for free! It’s no wonder why the application
process went so amiss. There wasn’t anyone stepping
up to take charge to get the job done! Everyone was just
waiting for something to happen. Have you heard
this saying? There are three types of people in the world;
those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those
who wonder what happened?
When submitting a patent
application to the USPTO, it’s important that you take on the
roll of someone who makes things happen. Ideas
of invention don’t come to most of us very often.
These ideas need to be treated with
respect and not wasted. Who better
to submit an invention to the patent office than the inventor
themselves.
In
conclusion, make sure you are properly informed when you start a patent
application. It is possible to patent without an attorney, as
long as you know what logical steps need to be taken. Filing
a patent application is easiest when you are the one who makes it
happen. Get the information and get it done.
