Information on PATENTS

The "America Invents Act" of 2011

On September 8, 2011, the Senate passed the "Leahy-Smith America Invents Act". For details, see our page on the America Invents Act

Patent Basics

• Patents - Frequently Asked Questions
• Provisional Applications - Frequently Asked Questions
• Representative Patents - We are proud of our clients - here are some of their inventions.
• Patent Costs - Look at our Budget Estimator and listing of U.S. Patent Office fees.
• Foreign Filing - Considerations for follow-on and foreign filing.
• Patent Application and Patent Timeline - important dates in the life of a patent application and a patent.
• "How do I..." - a collection of "how to" pages on patents - how to read a patent, how to understand an Office Action, a Patent Glossary, etc. 
• 2011 America Invents Act - "Patent Reform" became a reality in March 2013, with the change to "First to File" and many other revisions. Here's our page on the AIA and what it means. 

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)

The PCT allows you to delay your time to file in many (if not most) foreign countries.  We have a collection of pages explaining the PCT: 

• Description 
• Latest Updates 
• Complete Country List
• List of countries not in the PCT, with addresses of their patent offices. 

For Inventors... 

• Get your invention down on paper - download our: Invention Disclosure Form
• Invention Promoters: I've seen their ads on TV and heard them on radio - what about those Invention Marketing Companies? Are they for real? (hint - the answer is "no". Read the page to find out why)
• I've got a great idea... what next? 

Just for Fun

• "It seemed like a good idea at the time"- our popular Weird and Wonderful Patents page.
• Test your Patent IQ: take our Patent Quiz

Patent Links

• Patent Databases (offsite links)
  • USPTO patent databases - issued US patents and published applications (keyword searchable for patents after 1976 and all published applications)
  • Google Patents (beta) - US patents, keyword searchable back to 1789, in theory (in practice, the OCR process for older patents can be unreliable) 
  • Espacenet - the European Patent Office database - patents from many countries
  • Depatis - German Patent Office database - patents from many countries
  • Canadian (CIPO) patent database
  • Japanese patent databases
  • List of standard data codes on printed patents (INID codes)

• More Information on Patents:
  Our page of links to Other Intellectual Property Resources  - The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)'s own website
  Official Gazette of the USPTO listing recently issued patents (offsite link)