Anyone ever apply for a patent?
 

How did it go. Any tips?

yes but apparently the move was already in that kama sutra book, so it was denied

:Oh crap

after you get the patent, it can cost a ton of money to protect it..

good luck

Patents are useless.... they can jus change it slighty n still sell it

In order to quickly protect my idea/invention, and before I was ready to spend the $10K or so to apply for a full patent using patent attornies...I filed a conditional patent on my own for I think around $75 (you can claim small business staus to get that price). The problem is that this is a temporary/conditional application that is not judged on its merits and affords you no rights other than to claim patent pending and you have a year from the date of that filing to file the full one or else you lose the limited protection you get by having your invention registered and on file. I thought this was the more realistic route for me and it may work for you too.

Great advice Hershie! :)

I patented air, stop breathing you bastards!

I believe it is set up so anyone can do this now no matter if you are an individual or a corporation. You can do it online yourself at www.uspto.gov but some of the technical language can get pretty complex. There are a few services that can do it online for you for $300-500. Just enter file a US patent in google and I'm sure you find a company that can do this for you.

Hershie is correct, except you dont have to have a business to patent something so you can use the patent pending moniker.

We've actually filed for several patents in the past 5 years and a few of them are about ready to be granted finally :thumbsup

A couple of them are REALLY good patents too, some would say better than the Acacia patents :Graucho

Regards,

Lee

Hey, I am very happy for you that your program seems to be really taking off. I love the new site also!

I am not sure which patent you are refering to, but if you mean the full patent application, I would suggest you step back from using those $500 hustlers, as if the patent truly is something marketable, you want it to be full proof and as broad in scope as possible to protect yourself and the words you write down can have profound effects in getting it passed the reviewers and protecting what you have down the road. If this is a money making invention, I say invest in a good specialist attorney. To save money, you could use a professional patent search service separate from the attorney since they ususally mark it up and pass it on to these people anyway who search through lexis-nexis...for prior art...that could screw you over and poof all that money is wasted.

I was talking about the initial patent application that is good for one year and lets you claim patent pending for your work. To take it past that it would be wise to use an attorney that specialize in patents.