When to File a Patent Application

The best time to file for a patent is typically as soon as you have worked out the important elements of the invention. Filing as soon as your invention is stable has an significant advantage. Early filing provides you an undisputed date of invention that is earlier then thousands of other applications that will be examined along with your application by an "art group" at the United States Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO). These other inventors are solving comparable difficulties, and they are normally inspired by the similar desires, technical innovations, and altering marketplace conditions that inspired your invention. So countless times they consist of some comparable inventive elements in their patent applications.

If these other inventors file prior to you, any similar inventive ideas they disclose can be made use of to narrow the scope of your patent, reducing its value. This sometimes happens even for dissimilar inventions. Worse, somebody else might have the similar concept and you will be unable to obtain a patent. I have observed too numerous superb concepts fail to be granted patents in competitive locations given that the inventor waited to file.

Of course, in the United States an inventor can have a date of invention that is before the filing date of a patent application. In theory, the earlier filing date can be made use of to overcome disclosures of other inventions that filed patent applications ahead of your filing date. Still in practice, this is regularly tricky to do. The USPTO demands an inventor to show diligence in minimizing an invention to practice in order recognize an invention date that is earlier than a patent application filing date. The USPTO typically demands documentation that shows continuous effort to prove diligence, and is a generally hard normal to meet. Even with terrific documentation, inventors are typically only in a position to establish an invention date that is about six months earlier than their patent application filing date. Therefore, inventors are well served in filing as soon as doable.