Help available for drafting your
application |
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Application Pack available
here
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Any Questions?
click
here |
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| Service provided draws from a wide-ranging scientific
background, involvement with start-up and medium sized businesses, and hands-on
experience from in-house positions as Patent Specialist and Chief Patent Officer. |
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| The
"Do-It-Yourself" Route |
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This approach, which relies on your own searching and drafting abilities, is the
route taken by many inventors and involves no outlay, providing a level of
protection for your idea. It means you can begin to seek investors, partners,
etc and then when you have got more money, an improved application can be filed
during the year following your first application. It is also a good approach at
the very early stages of your idea, as it enables you to capture its essence at
an early stage. Further filings can be made during the year following filing as
the idea develops. |
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Information and help on how to do-it-yourself is available.
The do-it-yourself approach is Option 1 in the Table below. |
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Even with a reasonable do-it-yourself draft, you are a hostage to fortune if
there are articles or patents that remove the novelty and inventive step of your
idea. Option 2 addresses this issue, and once you have got your draft, you can
pay the Application Fee (£30) and the Search Fee (£150) and ask the IPO to do a
search. Better still is to ask the IPO to do an Examination at the same time
(£100), and then you also get an explanation of why any documents found are
'bad' for your invention. This is Option 3.
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| Free pre-filing check and
assessment |
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I offer a free pre-filing check and assessment of your draft – I will look
through your draft and report back to you whether it’s any good or not. I will
also file it on your behalf if wished. I will not however do any kind of search
– my assessment is based on your belief that what you have is novel and
inventive. This check is available for Options 1, 2 and 3.
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| Specialised Draft |
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Option 4 is when you want to get the best possible cover for you invention. Here
I work closely with you to define exactly what it is that your idea encompasses.
Then I perform a search on Espacenet and I report back to you to help us decide
whether your idea, or anything similar, has been described before. It means I
can harness the results of the search to draft a patent that is focussed on your
idea and your kind of business approach, seeking a scope of protection for you
idea whilst keeping in mind the likely product(s) or service(s) you will be
offering. However, note that this is not the kind of detailed Search a Search
Specialist or the IPO would do. |
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This means the search is focussed directly at your idea, which avoids the
problems mentioned above related to shortcomings in the way you might have
drafted your patent application, possibly rendering the search done by the IPO
inaccurate.
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| IPO Search and/or Examination Results |
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It takes the IPO 3 to 4 months to issue a Search or Combined Search &
Examination Report, and it may be that it identifies some documents which are
very close to your invention as claimed. It may be that the claims can be
amended and arguments made against the prior art, in which case the application
is well on the way to becoming a patent. |
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However, it may be that your idea is different to the priort art, or the prior
art can be worked around, but the application as filed doesn't contain enough
information to be able to allow the claims to be amended. In this case, the new
information can be added, and any improvements you have made to the idea can
also be added, and the application redrafted and refiled.
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| Speeding things up |
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Normally, a patent application is published 18 months after filing, and the
Examination requested 6 months after that. The IPO may take up to a year to
provide the Examination Report, which means that it may take 3 to 4 years before
you get your granted patent. |
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As you can only enforce a granted patent against an infringer, it can be
desirable to get a patent granted more quickly. Options 3 and 4 allow the
process to be accelerated so that if the Combined Search & Examination Report is
favourable, early publication can be requested. In principle, a patent may be
granted as quickly as 3 months after publication. There is more information
here. |
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If your idea relates to an invention with an environmental benefit, accelerated
processing is also available through the Green Channel for patent applications,
and there is information about that
here.
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| More links: |
| Use the box below to search for
related information from sites that I have selected.
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