BaffledBlabber

Patents and Trademarks - Part 3

We have two patent applications pending. We filed patent applications for the following reasons: (1) to protect the design of our products, and (2) if we chose to sell the product rights, to make them more appealing to a buyer.

You don’t have to have a patent in hand before you start marketing and selling your product. Both of our patents are pending and have been for more than two years. If you wait until you had a patent in hand before launching a product, chances are you might never launch.

You do have to have “patent pending” on your care or information label on your product, however, but that’s about it. The one-year provisional patent also allows you to use “patent pending” on your products. Patent pending signals to others that a patent application is the works, and no one can claim that they filed first or had the idea first, unless they did indeed file first.

We do most things ourselves to save money, but preparing and filing our own patents is not one of them, although lots of people do file their own patent applications. We both have many years of experience working in law offices, and it’s due to those those years of experience that we hired a patent attorney to prepare and file the applications. That said, we do file our own trademarks, sometimes with our patent attorney’s assistance.

So, now the stuff you really want to know—how much does a patent cost? So far, our first patent has cost us about $6500, including attorney prep fees and filing fees. The $6500 figure is low because we conducted our own search for “prior art”—those patents with elements that are similar to or the same as yours. Had our attorney conducted the search, which the USPTO requires, his fees would have been approximately $2000-$3000 more. If you choose to file your own patent application, the fees are approximately $330. The USPTO has a rather elaborate fee schedule
for patents.

How timely, as I write this, the patent attorney has emailed me indicating that our first patent application has been rejected. Upon thorough review, he has determined that the USPTO is on very shaky ground, and downright incorrect according to their own rules. Reviewing his comments, I have to agree. What that means now, however, is that our
attorney must prepare a detailed response that he estimates will cost $1600 to $2000. Happy Monday.

I think I have material for one more patent entry. So, I will discuss the basics of a patent application, the importance of prior art, and filing in my next installment.