Utility patents protect inventions that are a novel, nonobvious, and useful, such as: process innovations, machine innovations, manufacturing innovations, compositions of matter, or incremental improvements from foundational innovations. The three patentability requirements: New and Novel: For a United States patent the invention must never have been made public in any way, anywhere in the world, a year before the date on which an application for a patent is filed. In other countries, you have no one year grace period and require absolute novelty. Original and Nonobvious: An invention involves an inventive step if, when compared with what is already known, it would not be obvious to someone with a good knowledge and experience of the subject, for example, if you just make cosmetic changes that is obvious. Useful: This means that the invention must take the practical form of an apparatus or device, it has to do something.

Understanding the growing "Intermediary" landscape is essential for your development of in/out strategies. Whether you are looking to buy/sell, license, identify potential infringement/infringees, expand/limit patent scope within a portfolio, you need to be aware of the competive landscape. Many intermediaries have developed sophisticated algorithms to determine their course of action. With our patent search tools, you can quickly and easily execute strategy based on our sophisticated algorithms. Understanding patent analytics just got easier.

Yes, patents do relate to marketing strategy. A firm's brand power is a function of the belief that its products have sophisticated, state-of-the-art, and proprietary technology. Learn more how to identify the key technologies that are embedded into your brand promise.

Laws of nature: Galileo would not be able to patent his findings from his experiments at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Physical phenomena: Patent law classifies physical phenomena as products of nature. Thus, if your invention occurs in nature, it is a physical phenomenon and cannot be patented. Abstract ideas: Abstract ideas are concepts like pure mathematics and algorithms. You cannot patent a formula. However, you can patent an application of that formula. Thus, while you cannot patent a mathematical formula that produces nonrepeating patterns, you can patent paper products that use that formula to prevent rolls of paper from sticking together. Literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works: These can be Copyright protected. Inventions, which are considered not useful or possible: For example, the USPTO will not issue a patent on a perpetual motion machines; or offensive to public morality.

A single patent may be worth a billion dollars, another may be completely worthless. How can you discern such differences? With millions of patent documents (both issued patents and applications), there is a lot of information, that if properly leveraged with the correct technologies, can actually help us discern effectively. Benefits of www.ipstreet.com include: (1) All U.S. patent documents from 1976—present (2) [Forthcoming: International patent documents] (3) Unified Search (Boolean Text Search) (4) Concept Search (using Latent Semantics) (5) Meaningful, graphical results (6) Web-based, no installation required (7) Secure transactions and (8) Immediate Access.