Patent It Yourself - PDF Archive

ChaPter 3 | DOCUMENTATION and the PPA | 53
• Closest known prior art (the closest known existing
approach of which you’re aware), and
• Advantages (of the invention over previous developments
and/or knowledge—see the example in Fig. 3A).
Don’t forget to sign and date your conception and have
two witnesses also sign and date the record of conception.
See Section 5, below.
To record the subsequent building and testing of your
invention at a later page of the notebook, you will find it
most useful to record the following items:
1. Title and Back Reference
2. Technical Description
3. Photos and/or Sketches
4. Ramifications
5. Test Description
6. Test Results
7. Conclusion.
Fig. 3B (above) shows a properly done lab notebook
record of the building and testing of an invention. Don’t
forget to sign and date, and have your witnesses also sign
and date, the building and testing record, as well as the
conception record. (See Section 5, below.)
If you’re skilled enough to conceive, build, and test your
invention all at once, just combine all of the items of Figs.
3A and 3B as one entry in your notebook.
I strongly recommend that you record as much factual
data as possible; keep conclusions to a minimum and provide
them only if they are supported by factual data. Thus,
if a mousetrap operated successfully, describe its operation
in enough detail to convince the reader that it works. Only
then should you put in a conclusion, and it should be kept
brief and nonopinionated. For example, “Thus this mousetrap
works faster and more reliably than the Ajax brand.”
Sweeping, opinionated, laudatory statements tend to give
an impartial reader a negative opinion of you or your
invention. However, it’s useful to include the circumstances
of conception, such as how you thought it up and where you
were. This makes your account believable and helps refresh
your memory later.
Word all entries so that they’re complete and clear in
themselves—that is, so that anyone can duplicate your work
without further explanation. While you shouldn’t use the
lab notebook as a scratch pad to record every calculation
and stray concept or note you make or think about, you also
shouldn’t make your entries so brief as to be of no value
should the need for using the notebook as proof later arise.
If you’re in doubt as to whether to make an entry, make it;
it’s better to have too much than too little.
Also, you’ll find it very helpful to save all of your “other
paperwork” involved with the conception, building, and
testing of an invention. Such paperwork includes correspondence
and purchase receipts. These papers are highly
trustworthy and useful as evidence, since they are very
difficult to falsify. For example, if you buy a thermometer or
have a machine shop make a part for you, you should save
receipts and canceled checks from these expenditures since
they’ll tie in directly with your note book work.
4. How to Handle Computer Printouts,
Large or Formal Sketches, Photos, Charts,
or Graphs Drawn on Special Paper
If you have any computer printouts or any other items that
by their nature can’t be entered directly in the notebook by
hand, you should make or enter them on separate sheets.
These, too, should be signed, dated, and witnessed and then
pasted or affixed in the notebook in proper chronological
order. The inserted sheet should be referred to by entries
made directly in the notebook, thus tying them in to the
other material. Photos or other entries that can’t be signed or
written should be pasted in the notebook and referenced by
legends (descriptive words, such as “photo taken of machine
in operation”) made directly in the notebook, preferably with
lead lines that extend from the notebook page over onto the
photo, so as to preclude a charge of substituting subsequently
made photos (see Fig. 3B). The page the photo is pasted on
should be signed, dated, and witnessed in the usual manner.
If an item covers an entire page, it can be referred to on
an adjacent page. It’s important to affix the items to the
notebook page with a permanent adhesive, such as white
glue or nonyellowing (frosty) transparent tape.
If you have to draw a sketch in pencil and want to make
a permanent record of it (to put in your notebook) without
redrawing the sketch in ink, simply make a photocopy of
the penciled sketch: voilà—a permanent copy!
If you make any drawings, photos, or prints that are too
large to paste in your notebook, then you have two choices.
You can fold them to notebook size and glue them into
the notebook so that they can be unfolded and examined
without removing them from the notebook. Or you can
leave them separate from the notebook, but refer to, and
describe them in the notebook. In either case, be sure to
sign, date, and get witnesses to sign and date these large
documents.
5. Witnessing the Notebook
As I’ve repeatedly stressed earlier in this chapter, it’s
important that the notebook entries be witnessed. This is
because an inventor’s own testimony, even if supported by
a properly completed notebook, will often not be adequate
for proving an entry date. The witnesses chosen should