More on Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights
What is the process of granting a patent?
A patent is a right accorded to a person who had invented something new so that others cannot copy it without the permission of the inventor. A person would be required to apply for the patent grant from the government authority concerned and the process will take from two to five years, depending on the complexity of the invention and the place where it is applied. Although applications can be drafted and filed personally at the patent office, it would be more pragmatic to employ the services of a patent attorney as the document has to be properly crafted to be useful. You would have to describe your invention using suitable technical terms and the correct legal wording so that it will form an exclusive right that is enforceable in a court deliberation.
Patents are country specific, so if you want good protection, you will need to apply for the grant from other countries as well. If you use the services of a patent attorney or a patent agent, it would easily cost you US$10,000 in the United States. If you apply for other countries, then the cost will go up many times. So, before you decide on applying for patents, think of the cost first. It is to say the least, costly. To apply for a patent, you will need to fill up a form obtained from the patent office. Nowadays, you can also file it online. In the application, you will fill in the inventor's particulars and you will also need to submit a duplicate copy of the draft describing your invention. You will also have to state what your claim is. A sum of money will also have to be paid for processing. After that, you will have to wait for the patent office examiners to review your application. This can take from two years to seven years, depending on the complexity of your invention.
The work of examining your application is always a tedious work as the examiner would have to dig up past patents granted around the world in order to determine as to whether your invention have merits of being considered as a "new invention". There are of course millions of patents to be reviewed, but fortunately, we have the technology to parse them at a higher speed than say fifteen years ago. Still, it is considered slow, especially when you have technology that improves at a very fast pace and before the patent can be granted, it is already outdated, and therefore renders your product's usefulness to a minimum. During the process of reviewing the patent, the examiner will normally find certain things objectionable. The applicant will then be queried about it and given a right to argue back or to submit an amendment to rectify the objectionable part. If there are no more objections, then the application will proceed to a grant. So you can see that it does take plenty of time to get a patent, and you really need lots of patience to be able to go the full course. Good luck then.