For inventors seeking to protect their inventions, provisional patent applications can be a very useful tool. While the filing procedures are relatively simple and inexpensive, the practice is sometimes misunderstood. The mere filing of a provisional patent application is no assurance that it will provide adequate protection. The value of a provisional application depends on the quality and sufficiency of the description of the invention accompanying the application. For those inventors and companies that utilize provisional patent applications it is essential to understand what they are, what they are not and how to use them properly. Read More
Physicians hoping to commercialize their inventions should have a basic understanding of the patent system by which those inventions may be protected. All modern patent systems rest on a foundation of some simple, yet crucial, principles and objectives and understanding them is helpful to understanding the fabric of rules and laws that build on that foundation. It will help the physician inventor to participate constructively in the patenting process. The basis for the patent system can be illustrated by the example of the state of childbirth in seventeenth century England. Read More
When most people think of novelty items, they are envisioning the trinkets you buy at a party store for a gag birthday gift. But, medical device intellectual property is no laughing matter. In patent parlance, novelty refers to whether an invention is unknown or not used before being filed with the patent office, and is non-obvious. Patent law experts can provide a better legal description of novelty than myself, but from a practical standpoint, I’m more interested in helping doctors gain preliminary insight into the novelty of their ideas? Read More
Researchers at universities, similar to employees of medical device companies, are accustomed to assigning patent rights to their institution in an employment agreement signed during the hiring process. What may not be as obvious is that many non-academic hospitals are now including intellectual property (IP) rights in their physician employment agreements. Read More
This is one of the first questions that come to mind when developing medical devices. Will there be a sufficient degree of exclusivity from competition to justify the development and marketing costs for the product?
I remember my first patent rejection. Waiting 2 years for a response to my earliest medical device patent application, only to see all patent claims being REJECTED, left me frustrated and dejected. Then, a senior engineer matter-of-factly explained to me that all utility patent applications are rejected in their first office action. Read More
