Fun at the US patent office site

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by tkwetzel

For those of you who have submitted patents, I have a few questions:
How much time, effort, money, and resources does it take to submit a patent? I know there are a lot of variables and you don't even need to have anything tangible to patent, but based on what you did what are the answers to that question? Any other general information about submitting a patent would be appreciated (though I have read the a lot of stuff on the Patent Office website). Thanks.

I did search the forums and the internet in general and have found some general information, but I would like to know how far you went with your design process , how much of the process you did yourself, how much you had a patent attorney do and other things of that nature.

Fortunately, I work for a big company and they pay for the patent attorney, so I have no idea how much time he spends. Unfortunately, they keep the rights to the patent. But I get paid $500 for an idea that generally has a very narrow application and probably wouldn't go commercial anyway. If I really thought I could make money on the idea, then I'd quit and then write the patent and market it myself.

In terms of my effort. It takes several hours to write one up, the biggest part is searching prior art. This is important as at least once I developed an idea that I thought was pretty cool, only to find that it had been patented 25 years before. (at least it had expired by then) This has gotten a lot easier with the help of search engines. It usually takes at least a couple of hours in meetings with the patent attorney to get the words right and cover the claims properly. After that it is submit and wait.

One of the primary reasons we do patents is to document and protect our ideas so that we can continue to use them ourselves. If you submit the paperwork you are protected whether the patent is issued or not. That way nobody can force us to pay royalties to use our own idea.

I have one patent right now with two or three in process and four more we're going to submit to the patent attorney by the end of the year.