Patent

What is an information disclosure statement in a patent application, and why is it crucial to your patent application? An information disclosure statement is a statement that you must make in a [...]

The US government IP Offices are responding to the coronavirus outbreak by adjusting rules and requirements to allow for increased safety of applicants and users, and of the examining attorneys [...]

When you are protecting your inventions – devices, software, methods, materials – with patent applications, you should consider ways to expand the scope of protection. You can use continuation [...]

A continuation patent application is a patent application that lets you, the patent applicant, pursue patent claims that are based on the same invention description and drawings as another [...]

When you’ve applied for a patent, your patent application will often get a final rejection. This is a misleading term: it is the second rejection in the course of patent prosecution, after [...]

Today, January 15, 2019, is the 100th anniversary of the Great Molasses Flood, which happened in the North End neighborhood of Boston.  Over 2 million gallons of molasses burst from a storage [...]

The ordinary course of patent examination is slow.  Typically, it takes two to three years, or more, to have a patent application allowed, or to receive a final rejection from the USPTO.  For [...]

Design patents protect the ornamental appearance of an object.  With a design patent application, you can protect the shape of the object, the surface ornamentation of the object, or both.  A [...]

To prepare, file, and prosecute a patent application to get a patent granted costs money.  The costs fall into a few categories: cost for preparing the application (see my post on application [...]

Software can be protected with patents.  The source code of the software is not protectable with patents (though it may be protectable with copyright), and neither is the object code or the [...]