Monday, June 25, 2012

Why File A Provisional Application For A Patent?

Individuals knowingly or unknowingly develop awesome and brilliant ideas which are unique and not used or thought about by anybody else in the world. These ideas are basically innovations and inventions which if not treated properly can be either wasted or stolen by somebody else. Hence it becomes important for such an individual who has such an awesome project idea to get the invention protected with the help of a patent.

The time lag between the filing of the patent and the actual grant of the patent rights is quite large and may be as long as one year. This period can be threat to the inventor if the inventor’s idea or invention is not protected. Here comes the importance for a provisional application for the patent.

The power of provisional patent has become quite famous in the recent times due to the many cases of patents getting stolen or copied. The provisional application for patent should be filed immediately as the inventor conceives a new idea and is assured that the new idea is not an existing idea already being use by some other people. This can be checked and viewed with the help of patent search.

The task of filing a provisional patent application with the USPTO (the United States Patents & Trademarks Office) is very easy. First an application has to be prepared with the help of the instructions available on the USPTO website. This rarely takes an hour or so. The consultation or hiring of a professional like a patent attorney can be avoided at this stage of patent filing as the task is quite simple and can save many dollars of the individual.

This Provisional application grants the individual special rights during the twelve months from the date when the USPTO duly accepts the provisional patent application. The inventor can make effective use of these twelve months to get the real patent application made, for getting in touch with the potential investors, agents and manufacturers.

Moreover one can also advertise or promote the ideas without it being stolen because of the grant of the right of Patent Pending which warns the outsiders that if this idea is copied and in case it is granted by the authorities, the person so misusing the idea would become legally punishable as the inventor will in that case have rights over the invention retrospectively from the date of filing the application.

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