If you are not currently a client of Spencer A. Gibbs, LLC, it may be beneficial to read the FAQs prior to contacting the office.
The FAQs are here to answer your questions and hopefully save you time and expense.
Inventors should think things through from a
business standpoint: Is there a market for your invention? Is the market saturated with similar products? Is the market large enough to justify applying for patent protection? Are you prepared
to do the hard work necessary to market the invention, or license a patent? Do you have the money to follow through and can you afford to lose the money
that you invest in your invention?
If you think that you have a realistic understanding of what to expect as an inventor after having read the FAQs, contact Spencer A. Gibbs, LLC via email and set up a time for a telephone call.
Patents give a patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using or selling what is described in the patent claims. Patents are an important component of the economy. They allow an inventor to prevent others from making, using or selling an invention claimed in a patent. Patents can allow companies to invest valuable resources into researching, developing, and marketing products while preventing competitors from producing the same product. The company with the patent can then sell the product to recoup their initial development and marketing costs, while making a profit for investors and providing people with good jobs along the way. Without patent protection, competitors can simply wait until a product is developed by someone else and then make cheap copies because they don’t have the development costs to recoup.
Having a quality patent is important if you intend to develop and market your invention on your own, or if you intend to sell or license your patent to an existing company. There are many people who will write a low cost patent application for inventors, and some inventors will even write their own patent applications. Unfortunately, this often results in a poor quality applications which, if issued into patents, have narrow claims that are easily engineered around, or claims that are not fully supported by the specification and can be invalidated. If you are going to spend the considerable time and effort to develop and market an invention, you really should hire someone to produce a good quality patent application. If you intend to go the other course, and sell or license the patent, you need a good quality patent. Successful companies recognize when a patent is well written, and they also recognize when one is done poorly. A poorly written patent has no value to a company, and can even be a burden if they are relied on to protect development or if asserted against a potential infringer.
Patenting is a process that usually takes considerable time. In the most basic terms, a patent application is drafted which describes a person's invention, the application is submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the application is examined and, if found to be patentable, a patent is issued. Typically, the patent process takes more than a year, and often times it takes more than two or three years.
Generally, an invention must be patent eligible subject matter; it must be novel, meaning that no-one has ever come up with the same invention before; and it must be non-obvious, meaning that the invention would not have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art of the invention. Of course, these are just some of the fundamental requirements. Also, an inventor can lose all patenting rights for an invention, including foreign rights, if they take certain actions.
No. There is no way of knowing if your invention is novel or non-obvious. A patentability search can give you an idea of whether an invention is patentable, but there is still some degree of uncertainty even with the most comprehensive search.
It varies depending on the amount of time necessary to draft the application, the amount of time required to respond to Office Actions during the examination, government fees, and other factors. An inventor should expect to pay a few thousand dollars for a Utility patent application and should expect to deposit the estimated cost of the work in an escrow account with an attorney. If you are not prepared to do this, most reputable law firms will probably not take you on as a client. There is no reason for an attorney to spend thousands of dollars worth of time on a patent application for someone who is unwilling to show that they are earnest about compensation by providing a deposit.
Just like everything else, higher quality patent applications usually cost more than lower quality patent applications. If someone is writing a patent application for a low price, they are probably either not spending sufficient time to do the job right, or are inexperienced and can only justify billing their time at a low rate. Unfortunately, some new inventors do not recognize when they are getting poor quality work, and some low-cost patent drafting companies rely on large volumes of poor quality patent applications to make money. There are plenty of low-cost places ready and willing to draft patent applications, Spencer A. Gibbs, LLC is not one of them.
No. Although the firm provides a good value balance of cost and quality, Spencer A. Gibbs, LLC will probably not have the lowest initial price. It is very important to build a solid foundation for a patent application from the start, and that takes time. Making a decision for representation based on cost alone will not result in a positive outcome in the long run.
The firm has been asked to do pro-bono patent applications before and it just doesn't make sense to spend thousands of dollars time to produce a patent application for someone who can't pay the filing fees, market, or otherwise follow through with the invention. There are many reasons that the firm doesn't work for a partial interest in a company, the first reason is that it is too risky.
Yes you can, but drafting your own patent application is generally just not a good idea. Patent attorneys have law degrees in addition to an undergraduate degree in a technical field. Like other lawyers, patent attorneys have to pass a state bar. Unlike other lawyers, patent attorneys also have to pass the Patent Bar to demonstrate their knowledge of the laws and rules of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Even after passing the Patent Bar, it takes practice to draft a quality patent application. This type of practice means dozens of quality, well-thought-out applications written under the supervision of a more experienced attorney. The laws, rules and peculiarities of patents is better left to someone who has the experience to understand and deal with them. If you draft your own patent application, the firm cannot review and/or file it for you.
It is easy for people to remember patentrobot.