Patent Basics
How to Review a Patent Application
How can you mess up reviewing a patent application? It’s a lot easier than you think. Some comments made by an inventor, even the most innocuous comments, can be misconstrued if a patent ever was litigated. Rather than create a messy trail of documented comments remember the most important rule: Good news by mail, bad…
Read MoreBlueIron’s Patent Rating Checklist
A Patent Checklist to find out: How good is your invention? The spreadsheet contains many of the parameters discussed in BlueIron’s blog posts on patent due diligence.Please let us know if you have any suggestions/comments to make the checklist a better tool.
Read MoreActor Analysis for Patent Infringement
Due Diligence for Patents – Actor Analysis tells who is the likely infringer. Actor analysis is often overlooked when valuing inventions for patenting, or for valuing patents once they are issued. With actor analysis, we want to know who is the actual actor that infringes the invention. This analysis often identifies patents that you would…
Read MoreCalculating the Economic Value of a Patent
Due Diligence for Patents – The value of an invention is proportional to the ECONOMIC impact it has on a product or market. The economic value of an invention is notoriously hard to estimate, but such analysis can be used to compare different inventions to stack rank the inventions – or to highlight the advantages/disadvantages…
Read MoreHow to Finance Getting a Patent?
You can get financing for your patent through BlueIron before you raise money. Entrepreneurs are caught between a rock and a hard place: they need money to get proper patent protection, but they need patent protection to start raising money. What do you do? BlueIronIP finances getting your patent – while you are raising money.…
Read MoreWhat is the cost of a cheap patent?
What is the cost of a cheap patent? It turns out to be very expensive. Some startup companies do not want to spend much money on patents, so they get the lowest cost provider for IP services. The result: a cheap patent. A cheap patent that might not have the proper claim scope to protect…
Read MorePatent Rejection – What it takes to get a patent issued
Your patent will typically be rejected by the examiner. Do not worry. The back-and-forth process between the examiner and applicant is a necessary part of getting a strong patent allowed. We want the examiner to fully understand the invention and do a competent job of searching. If the examiner does a poor job, your patent…
Read MoreHow much does a patent cost?
A typical US patent cost is over $60,000. This is according to the American Intellectual Property Legal Association bi-annual survey. This is the average patent cost across the US for a patent on a “high technology” invention, and your mileage may vary. The patent costs are roughly half drafting (“preparation”) and prosecution. Preparation includes everything…
Read MoreA good patent is easy to read
A good patent is easy to read. If you can’t understand your patent application, neither can the patent examiner. Many people tell me that they did not understand their patent application because their attorney used “legalese”. Some even joke that it was so dense that they did not even know if their invention was in…
Read MoreWhat does a good patent application look like?
Good patents are NOT written in “legalese”. I had a telephone interview with a patent examiner a while ago and in the course of the interview, the examiner said that he really liked my patent application because I did not try to hide the ball with the invention. I was originally taught to write patent…
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