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This patent received a final rejection on January 24, 2014 and was listed as abandoned on August 6, 2014.
The examiner cited:
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Marley US Pat. No. 2,586,547 in view of Cosmopulos US Pat. No. 4,157,828.
Additionally:
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA)...
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As a pro se inventor, my examiner seems to be taking advantage of my supposed ignorance.
False. You are most likely not being singled out because you are a pro se applicant. Examiners are after “counts” (work credit), and the easiest way for Examiners to earn counts is to reject. They also earn counts when they allow, but if they allow bad applications, ...
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The international phase
There's no requirement to respond to the ISR or written opinion. While you are provided with the opportunity to file article 19 or 34 amendments and provide arguments, and these may be considered at the international phase, many countries will just re-search and re-examine your application anyway during the national phase. You may ...
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Regarding examples - The USPTO lets anyone with an internet connection look at every application filed in the last 30 years or so that was published and/or resulted in a patent. All back and forth between the supplicate and office are in the public domain once the document is published/granted. You find this in a USPTO database called PUBLIC PAIR. It has an ...
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An alternative not yet mentioned is to consult with your university's tech transfer office. You should do so under confidentiality agreement or otherwise ensure that they will keep any disclosure confidential so it does not count as prior art against you. Many professors are in the same situation as you-they have a potentially patentable invention but no ...
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Note that after filing the PCT, you won't really need to do anything until December 1, 2019 (30 months after the PCT app priority date), at which point you will incur costs going into the various national stages.
After the June 1, 2018 window closes, your application content will be effectively "locked down". Therefore, it's not possible to rectify lack of ...
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You say you aren't sure if you checked the box. The box is on the ADS form, if you filed electronically you would have uploaded that form as a PDF. You should be able to look at the PDF and see if you checked that box or not. If you did not check it there is no way to change it for this application.
According to the USPTO's MPEP 1122 Requests for ...
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It's only stupid if you plan to build a proper business plan around this idea and commercialize it. In that case, your provisional patent may not 'have teeth', and you wasted time and money.
Software patents are exceptionally tricky. You claims could hold no real weight, if challenged.... which is the only time that really matters. Remember that a ...
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You need to pay all three in order for your application to move forward. They are listed separately in the fee schedule but, other than for one very specific case, it is best to think of them as one fee. The fees do not need to be paid at the time of filing but if not paid then there is a surcharge and you will get a notice that it must be paid by a certain ...
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Yes, you can easily do this yourself.
The reason I would consider using an attorney in situations like this relate to the question of what happens if something goes wrong? The attorney is less likely to get things wrong and has insurance to make you whole if they do get it wrong. While costly, your situation may warrant using a patent attorney.
...
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In general there are many requirements and rules which may limit protection if a inventor files patent application of its own. But its a altogether myth that inventor cannot draft good patent application its another issue that he might have shorter claim but that can be covered if drafting is proper:-
Its my personal recommendation that an Inventor should ...
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You will not be able to change the specification or drawings in any manner other than to correct a typo (an error in the text that is clearly an error and clearly only has one way to be fixed can be changed) or improve the legibility of a drawing. Your attorney will be stuck with your errors of omission and commission. As another answer mentions, the claims ...
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You need not do anything. It will become abandoned by your failure to reply in time (37 CFR 1.135(a)).
Nevertheless, if you want, you can expressly abandon your application by filing a letter to this effect (37 CFR 1.138). However, if you do this, there's little chance of reviving it later. It would therefore be a pretty rare case that this is a good idea, ...
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This is a challenging question due to some recent court cases, in particular the Alice decision (Supreme Court decision) (Wikipedia Article). Both of these are highly recommended reading prior to writing a new application in this space, because the Alice decision created a new legal test for patentability for business methods, based on a test of abstraction.
...
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Perhaps you can look at it this way. How many countries do you really plan to enter once the PCT Application enters national phase entry. If its only USA or few handful more (say Canada and Europe), then you can altogether avoid the PCT. Instead, by June 01, 2018 prepare the non-provisional application with a professional US patent agent / attorney and use ...
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There is almost no application of the doctrine of equivalents any more so there is nothing valuable too lose, in current practice.
See https://patentlyo.com/patent/2019/05/doctrine-equivalents-exceptional.html
“ The doctrine of equivalents applies only in exceptional cases and is not “simply the second prong of every infringement charge, regularly ...
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EFS-Web is not very user friendly. You probably already looked at the USPTO's guide to EFS-Web. I don't think the EBC Help Desk people - who are very patient and helpful, will be much help with actual decisions, more the mechanics of uploading.
The PDF files need to be 8.5" by 11" (or A4) and have names that are EFS-Web legal. If a PDF is somehow 8.25" by ...
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The agreement is binding (to the extent of its wording and if they signed it to).
To protect your work from being patented by somebody else you can either file a patent/utility model/design or publish it. As the law grants the patent to the first person to file, its basically your problem if someone else patents this first. UNLESS it was stolen from you, ...
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In Short You dont need a attorney if you are inventor of invention. All patent offices can deal with the inventor/applicant itself. Its the local address requirement which makes it harder or to require attorney (because of confidentiality). However for filing you can follow my earlier answer here Patent filing procedure without a patent attorney
Some ...
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You can file online:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/index.jsp
Or you can send it in by mail to USPTO.
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s501.html
Depends on what you want to file. Are you looking to file a provisional or a utility or a design patent? In any case, you can find it here:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s601....
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To the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO, as I'm sure you know it) in the context of patents (that is, not for trademarks), a registered patent agent is pretty well the same as a patent attorney. They can both file the paperwork, and there aren't any patent skills implicit to someone who's gone to law school, let alone passed the bar, that a ...
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Eric, yes it does make sense. Have you continued to develop the application or work on pursuing patent protection since you posted this question?
You do not need to have a full working application in order to file a patent application. You could file a patent application while you are in the early parts of the development stage as long as you have ...
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The Manual for Patent Examination (MPEP) has some sections that mention that anything submitted "is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, . . ". A famous not really an application is "Method and instrument for proposing marriage to an individual" US 20070078663 A1 . I wouldn't file anything that seemed to ...
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I don't know where to start?
For starter you should read the USPTO patent applicant checklist on filing patent and its basic requirements and gather information listed therein. LINK
what if inventor or applicant is not from the USA?
Most of the countries prohibit direct filing of patent application to foreign countries. These are called security ...
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I don't have enough money (not even nearly enough) to file a patent
This point seems to come up in many questions. While patent applications seem expensive, they are often only a small part of the cost of doing business or starting a company. Even in the software fields, the opportunity cost of starting your own company probably dwarfs the cost of hiring a ...
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On the grant / rejection rate, The Register gave these figures for the EPO:
The total number of filings grew by 3.1 per cent in 2014 to more than
274,000, of which 64,600 patents were granted.
Which implies 76% have either been rejected, or are still under consideration.
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David,
The answer to your question can vary by Examiner. Technically, anything not disclosed in the spec can be considered new matter and face a 112 rejection, but some examiners are more lenient than others. Without knowing the specifics of your disclosure and/or claim language your question is difficult to address, but if you are concerned that mixing ...
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They can be very sensitive to anything added in the spec or drawings unless it is already presented in one place and you are also putting it somewhere else, it is a dictionary definition and if the word has more than one meaning the one you intended is already clear, it is an obvious error with an obvious fix, or it is "inherent". You might need an affidavit ...
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Only consider doing it yourself if you don't have any intention of licensing or enforcing a patent that might come from the application. Self-drafted applications typically end up providing illusory protection and result in the eventual loss of patent rights. Plus, it makes your company/idea extremely unattractive to potential investors and business partners....
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