Under United States law, patents protect an inventor’s rights to their work. It is prudent for inventors to patent inventions as soon as possible. Inventors have a finite amount of time with which they can lawfully retain their patent rights. The revoking of these rights is irreversible. The principal channels through which an inventor can lose their patent rights are publication, sale or public use and neglect.
By publication
An inventor’s right to patent their invention will be void if a publication made a year before the patent application was filed details it. The WIPO (World International Patent Organization) states that in the US, after filing the patent, an inventor has a year to do further testing and development, during which additional applications by foreign entities can be filed.
Therefore, publications need to come to the public eye after the patent’s legal approval. It is worth noting that any offending publication has to be exact and concise for parties to be unlawful in their ‘replication.’ Vague documentation cannot breach the rights of the inventor.
Through sale or public use
In the United States, an inventor’s public disclosure a year before the patent’s filing date counts as prior art. It will hamper your patenting efforts. What qualifies as public disclosure includes: sale or public use, grant proposals, email correspondence, abstracts, posters and oral disclosures.
When it comes to the sale or public use, the distribution of prototypes and research materials while embodying the spirit of the invention counts as disclosure. However, if the dispensing of these materials and media is for evaluation, testing or research, under strict notarized agreements that state the same, it will not count as disclosure.
The promise to sell a prototype or research material or the actual sale proves disclosure. Furthermore, it can provide the bar date where patent issuance is concerned.
Neglect
There are different ways in which an invention can suffer neglect or abandonment. The first of these is that an inventor may declare their intention to abandon their work. However, the more common situation is where the inventor conceals their invention, suppresses it or unreasonably delays the patent application process.
In the latter cases, a court has to carry out an in-depth analysis to determine whether, in fact, there has been an unreasonable delay. If the court ascertains the invention’s neglect, it belongs in the public domain. Purposeful concealing of an invention for an unreasonable age, where a second inventor comes forward with a patent for a similar invention, means the second party gains the patent rights.
Any Minnesota-based inventor needs to appropriately acquire a patent to ensure their invention is protected against would-be pirates. Knowing how one can lose theirs is integral information to have. Working with an intellectual property attorney would be beneficial for the security of your work.