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Category Archives: Patent
What is an effective filing date?
What is an effective filing date? If you”ve done some reading about patents, you may have seen references to an “effective filing date.” For instance, while patent attorneys will often shorthand an explanation of patents by saying they offer protection … Continue reading
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Tagged effective filing date, filing date, patent application, patent FAQ
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Is Web Scraping Legal?
I had a friend get in touch with me a while back about the legalities of web scraping. He found, and I’m finding too, a tremendous lack of information about web scraping. I think this is a result of there being so many strange ramifications depending on the many variables in the facts of each situation. I got interested in the legal issues involved in web scraping, and so I put together a hypothetical to test some of them out. Continue reading
How to Patent an Idea
Sorry, you can’t. You can’t patent just “an idea.” It isn’t allowed by the law. Patents are granted only for things, processes, machines, manufactured articles, inventions. Abstract ideas and theories, alone, cannot be patented. Recent Supreme Court law just … Continue reading
Job-Creating Patents
In an Op-Ed piece at the New York Times I came across via Patently-O, Paul Michel and Henry Nothhaft argue for the infusion of $1 billion into the Patent Office. What I noticed most in this article was their citation that … Continue reading
Filing a Non-Publication Request
Not very long ago, patent applications were maintained in secrecy until they issued as patents. Today, however, an application is published 18 months after its effective filing date, meaning that anyone can see your invention after you file it. By … Continue reading
Love, Marriage, Divorce & Patents
Patently-O has some interesting discussion regarding the ownership of a patent after a divorce. The case is Enovsys v. Nextel and stems from Sprint-Nextel’s appeal of a patent infringement verdict. As part of its argument, Sprint claimed that the plaintiff … Continue reading
Patents Explained: Claims
At last, the claims! The heart of the patent! Appropriately bringing this series of explanatory posts to an end, the claims conclude a patent. A patent can have one claim or many; generally, though, they’ve got 20 or less because … Continue reading
Patents Explained: the Detailed Description
Next in my series of posts, a topic probably deceiving the pithy label recently given: the detailed description. This eponymous section of a patent actually needs more explanation than one might garner from its name alone: the detailed description goes … Continue reading
Patents Explained: Description of the Drawings
Continuing the post series explaining patents, we now address the drawing descriptions. The description of the drawings is just that. It refers to each drawing by number and explains what the drawing is. The description is brief – it isn’t … Continue reading
Patents Explained: The Summary
Next up in the Patents Explained series: the summary section of the patent. The summary is similar to the background of the invention, and, in that same vein, some consider it extraneous and potentially damaging to the patent as a … Continue reading