Attention: Inventors and startups! Is the patent system confusing to you? Navigating the Patent System will give you more clarity regarding your potential next steps and increase your confidence as you make your patenting decisions. 7 Core Patent Concepts, Drafting the Patent Application and FAQs during patent process are explained.
Intellectual property law is currently exploding, as demonstrated by the growth of technology transfer offices in universities. More and more scientists, companies, and institutions are rushing to secure intellectual property rights for their ideas and inventions. This process frustrates many people; patent laws are constantly changing, and most books about them are either overly technical or boring. Protecting Your Ideas: The Inventor's Guide to Patents is a succinct, straightforward guide to the system. This guide presents the steps involved in obtaining patent protection for inventions. It is easy to read and brimming with essential information and advice compounded from FAQs posed by the author's academic and industrial clientele. The text includes tips, warnings, and examples that guide the reader through the invention process so patent rights are not jeopardized. Checklists and other helpful information are provided to assist the inventor preparing to enter the patent process. The book includes valuable resource information and business guidance to protect the inventor from consumer fraud that is sometimes associated with the patent process. Protecting and Idea is a must read for every engineer, scientist, or amateur inventor. - Simple, easy-to-read format demystifies the patent process - Numerous example patents help to illustrate the issues involved - Provides an overview of the types of intellectual property protection - Incorporates up-to-date information about U.S. patent laws - Advises inventors about the do's and don'ts of patenting - Includes useful resources for helping inventors safeguard their ideas
This book demystifies the seemingly convoluted Patent Laws of the United States and answers the most commonly asked questions related to Patent Law and breaks it down into simple, easy to follow language. This book is for the wise inventor who wishes to educate him or herself first before approaching a Patent Attorney.
An excellent text for clients to read before meeting with attorneys so they'll understand the fundamentals of patent, copyright, trade secret, trademark, mask work, and unfair competition laws. This is not a "do-it-yourself" manual but rather a ready reference tool for inventors or creators that will generate maximum efficiencies in obtaining, preserving and enforcing their intellectual property rights. It explains why they need to secure the services of IPR attorneys. Coverage includes employment contracts, including the ability of engineers to take confidential and secret knowledge to a new job, shop rights and information to help an entrepreneur establish a non-conflicting enterprise when leaving their prior employment. Sample forms of contracts, contract clauses, and points to consider before signing employment agreements are included. Coverage of copyright, software protection, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as the procedural variances in international intellectual property laws and procedures.
Patent laws are different in many countries, and inventors are sometimes at a loss to understand which basic requirements should be satisfied if an invention is to be granted a patent. This is particularly true for inventions implemented on a computer. While roughly a third of all applications (and granted patents) relate, in one way or another, to a computer, applications where the innovation mainly resides in software or in a business method are treated differently by the major patent offices in the US (USPTO), Japan (JPO), and Europe (EPO). The authors start with a thorough introduction into patent laws and practices, as well as in related intellectual property rights, which also explains the procedures at the USPTO, JPO and EPO and, in particular, the peculiarities in the treatment of applications centering on software or computers. Based on this theoretical description, next they present in a very structured way a huge set of case studies from different areas like business methods, databases, graphical user interfaces, digital rights management, and many more. Each set starts with a rather short description and claim of the "invention", then explains the arguments a legal examiner will probably have, and eventually refines the description step by step, until all the reservations are resolved. All of these case studies are based on real-world examples, and will thus give an inexperienced developer an idea about the required level of detail and description he will have to provide. Together, Closa, Gardiner, Giemsa and Machek have more than 70 years experience in the patent business. With their academic background in physics, electronic engineering, and computer science, they know about both the legal and the subject-based subtleties of computer-based inventions. With this book, they provide a guide to a patent examiner’s way of thinking in a clear and systematic manner, helping to prepare the first steps towards a successful patent application.
In today’s knowledge-based global economy, most inventions are made by employed persons through their employers’ research and development activities. However, methods of establishing rights over an employee’s intellectual property assets are relatively uncertain in the absence of international solutions. Given that increasingly more businesses establish entities in different countries and more employees co-operate across borders, it becomes essential for companies to be able to establish the conditions under which ownership subsists in intellectual property created in employment relationships in various countries. This comparative law publication describes and analyses employers’ acquisition of employees’ intellectual property rights, first in general and then in depth. This second edition of the book considers thirty-four different jurisdictions worldwide. The book was developed within the framework of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI), a non-affiliated, non-profit organization dedicated to improving and promoting the protection of intellectual property at both national and international levels. Among the issues and topics covered by the forty-nine distinguished contributors are the following: • different approaches in different law systems; • choice of law for contracts; • harmonizing international jurisdiction rules; • conditions for recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments; • employees’ rights in copyright, semiconductor chips, inventions, designs, plant varieties and utility models on a country-by-country basis; • employee remuneration right; • parties’ duty to inform; and • instances for disputes. With its wealth of information on an increasingly important subject for practitioners in every jurisdiction, this book is sure to be put to constant use by corporate lawyers and in-house counsel everywhere. It is also exceptionally valuable as a thorough resource for academics and researchers interested in the international harmonization of intellectual property law.
This Guide aims to assist users in searching for technology information using patent documents, a rich source of technical, legal and business information presented in a generally standardized format and often not reproduced anywhere else. Though the Guide focuses on patent information, many of the search techniques described here can also be applied in searching other non-patent sources of technology information.
Buyers and sellers engaging in the cross-border sale of goods are well-advised to be conversant with the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), which governs international sales contracts. The CISG has been ratified by 89 states, which together account for over three-quarters of all world trade. This practically-oriented, article-by-article commentary on the CISG will be useful to legal practitioners, counsel and arbitrators dealing with international sales contracts. The in-depth annotations deal extensively with the legal issues likely to arise under each CISG article. The annotations include up-to-date analyses of state court and arbitral decisions, the legal doctrines derived from these decisions, and relevant scholarship to date. Among the issues and topics discussed are the following: interface with national laws; scope of application; obligations of seller and buyer; non-conforming goods and duty to notify; breach of contract and remedies; damages; force majeure exemption; and termination of contract and its consequences. This book is an updated translation of the second German edition of a valued resource in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and an authority regularly cited by the Swiss Supreme Court. The commentary is influenced by legal authorities from both civil law and common law backgrounds. Throughout, the contributors refer to the cisg-online.ch database, enabling users to locate decisions easily. User-friendly, focused on practical questions, concise but comprehensive, this article-by-article commentary provides a quick and trenchant overview of existing legal opinions and court/arbitral decisions. It will prove immensely valuable to legal practitioners, facilitating their formulation of reliable solutions to legal problems involving the CISG.