Patent It Yourself - PDF Archive

Your Legal COMPANION | 3
D. Should You Do It Yourself?
The big question is, of course, even though many if not most
inventors can file and handle their own patent application,
should you do so on your own or hire an expert? After
all, you probably hire people to do all sorts of things for
you, from fixing your car to remodeling your kitchen, that
you could do yourself. The most powerful incentive for
patenting it yourself is the amount of money expert help
costs. Or put another way, even though most car mechanics
make a pretty good living, most of them can’t afford
to belong to the same country club as patent attorneys.
The cost factor alone may dictate your decision for you
if you can’t afford the $5,000 to $15,000 most attorneys
now charge to prepare a patent application on a simple
invention.
On the other hand, if you’re fortunate enough to be able
to afford an attorney and you either don’t have enough time
to do it yourself, you don’t think you’ll be able to write a
detailed description of your invention in conjunction with
drawings (it’s easier than you think), you aren’t diligent and
committed enough to complete projects in a reasonable
time, or you think you can’t complete a detailed writing job
in a fairly high-quality manner, then perhaps you should
use an attorney in conjunction with Patent It Yourself, to
monitor and enhance the attorney’s work.
The above can be expressed by the following proportion:
AT • WA • D • DC
DIY α
AF
which means you should be inclined to Do It Yourself in
direct proportion to your Available Time, your Writing
Ability, your Diligence, and your Desire to Control things,
and in inverse proportion to your Available Funds. While
this proportion isn’t even an approach at precision, it
provides the appropriate criteria and how to use them when
making the do-it-yourself versus hire-an-attorney decision.
The best answer for some inventors may be to do some of
both. Using this approach, diligent inventors will do much
of the patent work themselves, only consulting with an
attorney at an hourly rate if snags develop, or to check the
patent application before submission.
Proposed Legislation That May Affect Your Patent
As this edition goes to press, important changes have been
proposed in the patent rules and laws. If implemented, these
changes will likely reduce the strength of patents. Some
powerful entities, mainly computer, software, and financial
service companies, are in favor of these changes. Other
powerful entities, mainly drug companies, independent
inventors, Nobel laureates, and some legislators, want to keep
patents strong and thus are opposed to these changes. The
winner will be determined to a large extent by the influence
of each side over our legislators. Here is a status report as of
this edition (February 2011).
New Rule Changes Halted: The PTO issued new rules
regarding (a) the number of applications that may be
permitted in a chain of continuing applications, and (b)
the number of claims that may be filed. A number of
organizations have sued the PTO, contending that these
changes go beyond the PTO’s powers. A trial court tentatively
agreed and has issued a temporary injunction, ordering
the PTO not to implement the new rules until the issues
are resolved after a full trial. However, the appellate court
reversed part of the trial court’s decision, holding that the
PTO may limit the number of applications in a chain. Check
my blogsite at http://patentityourselfupdates.blogspot.com
for further updates.
New Patent Revision Bills Stalled: Various patent revision
bills are pending: One bill that would completely revise the
patent statutes is pending, but has been derailed because of
protests by inventors, concerned legislators, drug and biotech
companies, labor unions, manufacturing and chemical
companies, research universities, and a new administration.
Complete inform ation about the bill and the arguments
against its provisions can be found on the Professional
Inventors’ Alliance site, (www.piausa.org).
While this revision has some provisions that would help
independent inventors, I believe that its overall effect would
be harmful. I urge you to call and write to your federal
representatives and senators to urge them to oppose this
bill in order to keep our patent system strong, since I believe
that this is one of the main factors that has made the U.S. a
technological leader. Another bill would change the patent
system into a three-tiered system where every patent
applicant could elect to either (a) have the patent application
examined right away for a relatively large fee, (b) have it
examined in the normal course for a moderate fee, or (c) have
examination deferred for a number of years and not pay any
examination fee until examination was requested.
I will post the resolution of these issues on the update site
for Patent It Yourself at Nolo’s site (www.nolo.com).
—David Pressman