Sadly, the value of a patent is generally determined by the courts. Most litigation involves infringement, but there are also other lawsuits regarding ownership and inventorship and SEC anti-competitive allegations. Let IPStreet.com help you better protect against patent infringment, better utilize patent search tools and patent your invention under the guidance of an experienced patent lawyer.

Although anyone can claim to inventor or create something (e.g., Al Gore created the Internet), the reality is that an idea needs to be carefully considered in context of the law. If you are serious about protecting your invention, you should contact a patent attorney or patent agent. Applying for a patent, and its subsequent patent prosecution process, does cost money. You may see ads for low-cost services to file a patent on your behalf. Such solutions are viable if your goal is to boast to your friends that you patented something. However, if you have real-world business ambitions, it is imperative that the person writing the claims of your patent is a well-qualified lawyer. The adage "you get what you pay for" is very true in the intellectual property community. Realistically, a single patent is going to minimally cost you around $10K for the application fees, legal fees to write the claims, and so on. You want to find a legal professional that is a subject matter expert in your domain (whether it is IT, manufacturing, mechanical engineering, biotech).

The main type of patent, a utility patent, covers inventions that function in a unique manner to produce a utilitarian result. Examples of utility inventions are Velcro® hook-and-loop fasteners, new drugs, electronic circuits, software that is tied to some form of hardware, semiconductor manufacturing processes, new bacteria, newly discovered genes, new animals, plants, automatic transmissions, Internet techniques and methods of doing business (provided physical things are involved), and virtually anything else under the sun that can be made by humans. To get a utility patent, one must file a patent application that consists of a detailed description telling how to make and use the invention, together with claims (formally written sentence fragments) that define the invention, drawings of the invention, formal paperwork, and a filing fee. Sometimes the state of the art, rather than the nature of the novelty, will determine whether a design or utility patent is proper for an invention. If a new feature of a device performs a novel function, than a utility patent is proper. According to the USPTO in 2009, there were 456,106 utility patent applications. Patent law is designed to promote innovation in "science and useful arts." It's right there in the first Article of the Constitution: in order to be patentable, an invention needs to be useful in some way. Utility patents expire 20 years from the date of filing.

The Japanese commissioner in Washington DC in the 1900's studying the American patent system said, "We have looked about us to see what nations are the greatest, so that we can be like them... We said, 'What makes the United States such a great nation?' and we investigated and found that it was patents, and we will have patents."

There often comes a stage in a patent's life when a proprietor asks the question how much is my patent worth? The reasons for asking this question may vary dramatically. IP Street is the right place to help you better understand what your invention is worth and help you capitalize on your innovation by providing actionable business intelligence.