Saturday, August 2, 2014

Introduction To Patent Prosecution Law Firm Services

By Imelda Reid


Prosecution implies that this is about patent infringement litigation. Actually, it's more of a term for a set of professional services separate from lawsuits. The patent prosecution law firm is the entity that takes care of pre-grant spade work and preparation, the filing of the application and negotiations with the issuing patent office, and also post-grant issues such as amendments and opposition.

Practitioners in this niche and highly specific area of the law have to sit down with an applicant and extract detailed information about the invention. It needs to be broken up into prior art and new features. Prior art encompasses things used in or related to the invention that are already widely known among people in the same field. Drawings and notes the inventor has kept will be needed to spotlight the new features and how they were created.

There's a lot of groundwork involved before a filing gets submitted to the USPTO or other such issuing agencies. For instance, it's important to find out and precisely list who contributed to the creation of which part of the invention. Patents may be invalidated if this list of inventors involved turns out to be incorrect.

Another area that calls for a lot of due diligence are the public disclosures and sale offers (if any) made before the application is filed. If any of it turns out to be true, the issuing body may reject the filing. All this needs a lot of hard work, manpower and time, but practitioners cannot afford to stretch the preparatory work for too long because it has to be completed within a narrow window.

Time is important because it's common for an inventor to finish a close second to someone else who filed the same thing a day or a week or month before. Lacking other factors that might tilt the scales, the party that filed first gets the nod. All major jurisdictions including Japan, the U. S. And Europe have this first-to-file rule in place. The U. S. Does have interference hearings as an alternative mechanism in case of disputes.

The actual application itself is written in a very specific style and must be incredibly accurate in all regards. It usually contains at least two main components. One is a general description of the invention. The other is the set of claims that sets it apart from the prior art.

Drawings and models may also be used to provide a more accurate and well-defined representation of the invention. This makes it easier to show how it differs from other similar patents. Issuing bodies will focus on a process called search and examination. The search is for prior art, and the examination is the office action that looks into the application. Together, these two actions will enable the agency to determine whether this is an invention and should be granted a patent.

Post-grant issues where the law firm is contacted to provide patent prosecution services usually has to do with either an amendment or opposition. Inventors often seek a reissue to correct a mistake or broaden a patented invention's scope. Reexaminations may be asked for by anyone if they have valid grounds to suggest that the issuing body erroneously granted a patent and some or all parts of the application need to be looked at more closely.




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