A provisional patent application in India is generally used to secure an early priority date for an invention. The main advantage of filing a provisional patent application is that an applicant (or inventor) need not spend extensive time and money on drafting it and getting it filed. As an applicant, you can just describe your invention's subject matter into a readable format and file it promptly ..read more

Claims in a patent are essentially clauses that define the extent of protection conferred by that patent. Claims in the patent define the boundary or scope of an invention on which protection is sought by applying for the patent. Whether an invention is patentable or not, is decided based on whether the claims are novel and inventive. This means that the claims must capture both novelty and ..read more

When you think of filing patents, you also think of the coverage provided and the costs of patents. It's only logical to presume that for cost effectiveness, it would be great if you could file a worldwide patent so you won't have to file it in each and every country separately. But, is there something called a worldwide patent that gives you protection across the globe with a single patent ..read more

Once you have filed a patent application, there are 2 possibilities:1. The patent application gets granted.2. The patent application gets rejected.Both the outcomes can take from a few months to several years depending on the backlog at the Patents Office. However, let's look at what you as an inventor can do in these scenarios.  If the patent gets granted, you have to pay a certain maintenance ..read more

A District Court in the Eastern District of Texas has recently ordered Apple to pay $506.2 million for patent infringement, to a Patent Management company called PanOptis Patent Management LLC. Looking at the background of this case, Panoptis (together with some other companies - Plaintiffs Optis Wireless Technology, LLC; Optis Cellular Technology, LLC; Unwired Planet, LLC; and Unwired Planet ..read more

There are several situations where you may have to read or skim through patents quickly because of a short span of time at hand or during a research involving reading several patents. The simplest thought that comes to mind is to review each patent one by one but it can be hugely time consuming and daunting. Below is a technique that can be used during such situations for reading scores of  ..read more

If you have filed a patent application in U.S., this article will help you check the status of your U.S. patent application. Before reading this article, you may also think that you can search Google patents for this purpose. Well, you are correct, however, one downside with Google patents is that it takes some time to be updated and may not reflect the most recent patent data or legal events.  ..read more

If you have an idea that you think can be patented, here are some first steps you should take to nurture the idea and to transform it into a strong patent. If an idea is well-thought out and well-documented, a great chunk of confusion is taken away and the patent application drafting process is greatly simplified. The following illustration gives a quick overview on how to document your idea ..read more

Indian patents are not typically available on Google patents. The most relevant platform to search Indian patents or patent applications is InPASS (abbreviation for 'Indian Patent Advanced Search System'), which is the official database of Indian Patent Office. This is an excellent tool and provides features that are either at par with the Google Patents basic search and advanced search tools or ..read more

If you are familiar with how to search patents on Google, let's take your prior art search a notch higher by looking at how to do an advanced patent search using Google Patents. Google patents is a massive but free patent database having over 11 million granted patents and over 6 million patent applications from US alone, to put things in perspective. It additionally covers several patent ..read more