Intellectual Property Lawyers and Solicitors
Patents
A patent is a right granted by the state to an inventor to stop others from making, using or selling the patented invention without permission.
Inventors should be particularly careful to protect their inventions before talking to others. Otherwise they could lose the possibility of a patent. If you think you have something you could patent then contact an expert as soon as possible.
How to disclose your ideas before you file a patent
If you must disclose your ideas to others before you have filed your patent application, then consider disclosing as little as necessary depending on your purpose. If possible just talk about the invention in broad terms giving as little detail away as possible.
If you are asking someone to work on your project then you will need to use a water tight agreement to protect yourself. This is not just to protect the invention you are disclosing, but also to ensure you get all the rights you will need in the output of product manufacturers, website developers, or others.
What can be patented?
Patents protect the way things work, what they do, how they do it, what they are made of or how they are made. The main criteria are that the invention is new and nvolves an inventive step.
An idea needs to be more than just an abstraction to be an invention. For example, if you have an idea for a machine that can instantly beam original documents from one location to another, you have a great idea. But it is only if you actually know how to build such a machine that you have a great invention. You do not need to build a model or prototype of it. But you do need to be able to describe how it will work, and draw pictures or flow charts to show how it will look.
Sometimes it can be difficult to judge whether there has been an 'inventive step'. This involves something more than just a trivial difference over what is already known. A red bicycle is novel over a green bicycle but clearly lacks an inventive step. However, a blue squash ball was held to be potentially inventive over a black squash ball. The invention lay in the appreciation that the flight of a blue squash ball could be more easily perceived than that of a black one.
So, even quite mundane discoveries could qualify as an inventive step. For example, creating something by putting together two existing products could result in a product that is patentable. The one proviso is that the existing invention should have been modified into something unique and non-obvious. The proverbial ‘better mousetrap’ is often cited as the archetypal invention.
How to apply for a patent
The first step is to file a UK patent pending application. This application plants the flag for any future applications you may want to make anywhere in the world. Once you have filed the application you may talk about the invention to others, or sell products incorporating the invention.
A UK patent gives you the right to stop others importing products into the UK which infringe the patent. To have patent protection in other countries it is necessary to make separate applications. Within a year of the UK filing date, it is necessary to decide whether to convert the application to a worldwide application.
The process of obtaining a full UK patent can take from three to five years and sometimes longer. However, if you do not think your patent has commercial potential you can simply drop your application after the first year, and not take it any further.
International PCT application
In many countries novelty is judged on a world-wide basis, that is to say, the invention must never have been made public in any way, anywhere in the world, before the date on which the initial patent application is filed.
Once you have filed your UK application, towards the end of one year from the filing date, you can file an International or PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) application. This can cover a large number of countries and allows you to proceed with only a single application for a further 1½ years, making a total of 2½ years in from the initial filing date. Only then do you need to actually choose the countries in which you want to file for patent protection.
It is vital to establish the commercial value of the invention within this 2½ year period to determine whether it is worth incurring further costs. When 2½ years has elapsed from the initial UK filing date, you must decide in which countries to seek patent protection