The terrible word is "Patent." The way from idea to patented development

I am sure that for many people the word "patent" is associated with large corporations and their cockroaches in their heads. At the same time, many tricks in the garage were littered with some tricky contraption, which is waiting in the wings to be put into production. And someone may have already begun production. In both cases, it is worth considering the protection of intellectual property.
The purpose of this article is to show the least labor-intensive way from an idea to a patented development, as well as to explain the importance of protecting your idea from plagiarism. To begin with, I will try to dispel several myths that I often encounter.

Patent Myths

Patent - for large companies. A small business does not need it.


Most small businesses are built around a single development. While large companies have a whole set of developments that they actively defend, forming their patent portfolio. Moreover, the development of management strategies for this patent portfolio is not easy and is considered a whole art. And what will happen if competitors start producing products that are similar to yours and which are not protected? If we are talking about a large enterprise, you will incur losses, but most likely you will remain “afloat”, because you have a “rear” in the form of other developments. And if we are talking about a small enterprise, then you are likely to lose a significant share of the market and, possibly, go broke if you do not take any additional steps to improve the products. After all, a patent protects your products not only from direct copying, but also copying in case
An example from my practice : the inventor of the playpen, which can be used on travel, managed to get a patent for his development before a large corporation, eventually concluded a supply agreement with them and increased his company's annual profit by several orders of magnitude. If a patent had not been received on time, a large corporation could have produced such an arena on its own.

Only fundamentally new technologies need protection.

Even minor changes to a known technical solution can be a source of profit. Moreover, if the changes are significant, they will most likely be difficult to copy: firstly, it is necessary, at least to understand the technical field, to understand the essence of the problem, conduct research on the copy object, and secondly, it will cost production using new technology In any case, more difficult than upgrading the current one. On the contrary, a small change in the current technology of production or modernization of products is copied at a relatively low cost. At the same time, profits from small improvements can be huge.
The protection of technical solutions that are not fundamentally new is usually quite simple, because in Russia you can obtain a patent for a utility model for a device (according to Article 1351 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, a technical solution related to the device is protected as a utility model. Legal protection is provided for the utility model if it is new and industrially applicable).
From practice: 4 years ago, N came up with a design to protect the water produced from the well from pollution. The design was very popular with consumers. About a year ago, the competitors of this company were seen using a similar design. Unfortunately, it was recognized that the developed design has already become widely known, and it was not possible to patent it. This sad experience reminds us of the benefits of early patenting, sometimes even at the idea stage.

The computer program cannot be patented.
A computer program is subject to copyright and a patent cannot be obtained for it, only a certificate that once again is proof of your copyright and the date the program was created. However, for example, the algorithm used in the program as a method can be protected. In this case, you can get a patent for an invention. Here you can say quite a lot, but it has already been done before me here and here .

In our country, a patent is an empty piece of paper.
Perhaps the most common myth. American and European patent wars are widely known, but in recent years the number of lawsuits related to intellectual property issues has been increasing in our country. As a rule, in the case of a high-quality patent, the court remains on the side of the copyright holder. This year, the Intellectual Property Court began its work , the first case to which was received on July 3. To date, the Intellectual Property Court is considering 719 cases. The maximum amount of the Russian patent litigation lawsuit amounted to 1 843 746 000 rubles, the dispute related to the invention “Method for the production of quick-cooked egg noodles”. The patent holder won.

Patenting is long and difficult.
Unfortunately, according to our legislation, this is not so fast. For example, the term for obtaining a patent for inventions is on average 1.5 years, for a utility model - 4-6 months, a certificate for a computer program - 3 months, and also not taking into account the Russian Post. However, for example, comparing with the United States, where the term for obtaining a patent for an invention is from 1.5 to 3 years, everything is not so bad. With regard to complexity: the independent preparation of the application is not an easy task. Especially if the patent does not "go to the table", but will be really used.
The first step in writing an application is to write the essence of the solution. In this case, in addition to the fact that it is necessary to adhere to certain formal rules, it is worth using generally accepted terms, describing it logically, and most importantly for the future. It is necessary to predict any development and modernization of the object within the framework of the technical task that it is solving and describe all the necessary features in the formula, fixing the scope of legal protection. Further in the remaining sections of the description also has its pitfalls. But this is the topic of a separate article.
There is always the option to seek the help of a specialist in the field of patenting, whose tasks include not so much filling out the application itself and related documents as drawing up the application in such a way that it truly protects the rights. At the same time, a good specialist will be able to come up with all of the options for developing an idea and describe it in such a way that future upgrades would be copy protected before they even appear. This is exactly what many years have been studying.

Patenting is expensive.
Indeed, the cost of a patenting service is not cheap. Registration of a patent for an invention with the help of a specialist is an average of 50-80 thousand rubles. in Russia. Also, patent fees will include state duties., on average, amounting to 4-7 thousand rubles and depending on the type of the claimed object of intellectual property (invention, utility model, etc.).

How to get a patent for free?

If you need to get a quality patent for a legal entity, or IP you can use the help of our state. There are various funds supporting entrepreneurship, in some of them there is a service for free patenting. And it is really free for the future patent holder, including the services of specialists, so you need to use it until you have “covered the bench." Examples of organizations that you can apply for free patenting services are the Skolkovo Foundation, the Sverdlovsk Regional Entrepreneurship Support Fund. Such organizations give grants for business development, and also pay for patenting services for development to partner firms that have established themselves in the market of consulting services in the field of intellectual property. In case you apply for free patenting to the Skolkov Foundation, A prerequisite is that you be a resident. The Sverdlovsk Regional Entrepreneurship Support Fund provides support in the free patenting of any legal entities or individual entrepreneurs registered in the Sverdlovsk Region. Perhaps a similar fund will also open in your region, for example, RVC (Russian Venture Company) also plans to open a patent fund during 2014. Honestly, before writing this article, I was sure that there were a lot more funds and wanted to give a long list. But, either they are not in a hurry to provide information about what they are doing (maybe they take away the remnants of state money), or I just looked poorly. If someone knows about such a fund in their region, I will gladly add it here to the list of funds. The Sverdlovsk Regional Entrepreneurship Support Fund provides support in the free patenting of any legal entities or individual entrepreneurs registered in the Sverdlovsk Region. Perhaps a similar fund will also open in your region, for example, RVC (Russian Venture Company) also plans to open a patent fund during 2014. Honestly, before writing this article, I was sure that there were a lot more funds and wanted to give a long list. But, either they are not in a hurry to provide information about what they are doing (maybe they take away the remnants of state money), or I just looked poorly. If someone knows about such a fund in their region, I will gladly add it here to the list of funds. The Sverdlovsk Regional Entrepreneurship Support Fund provides support in the free patenting of any legal entities or individual entrepreneurs registered in the Sverdlovsk Region. Perhaps a similar fund will also open in your region, for example, RVC (Russian Venture Company) also plans to open a patent fund during 2014. Honestly, before writing this article, I was sure that there were a lot more funds and wanted to give a long list. But, either they are not in a hurry to provide information about what they are doing (maybe they take away the remnants of state money), or I just looked poorly. If someone knows about such a fund in their region, I will gladly add it here to the list of funds. registered in the Sverdlovsk region. Perhaps a similar fund will also open in your region, for example, RVC (Russian Venture Company) also plans to open a patent fund during 2014. Honestly, before writing this article, I was sure that there were a lot more funds and wanted to give a long list. But, either they are not in a hurry to provide information about what they are doing (maybe they take away the remnants of state money), or I just looked poorly. If someone knows about such a fund in their region, I will gladly add it here to the list of funds. registered in the Sverdlovsk region. Perhaps a similar fund will also open in your region, for example, RVC (Russian Venture Company) also plans to open a patent fund during 2014. Honestly, before writing this article, I was sure that there were a lot more funds and wanted to give a long list. But, either they are not in a hurry to provide information about what they are doing (maybe they take away the remnants of state money), or I just looked poorly. If someone knows about such a fund in their region, I will gladly add it here to the list of funds. that there are many more funds and wanted to give a long list. But, either they are not in a hurry to provide information about what they are doing (maybe they take away the remnants of state money), or I just looked poorly. If someone knows about such a fund in their region, I will gladly add it here to the list of funds. that there are many more funds and wanted to give a long list. But, either they are not in a hurry to provide information about what they are doing (maybe they take away the remnants of state money), or I just looked poorly. If someone knows about such a fund in their region, I will gladly add it here to the list of funds.
Intellectual property departments at universities can also help you patent for free. And the payment, most likely, will be taken not with money, but with a share in the business and joint ownership. Which is sometimes more expensive than just paying for services once. But they do it with great pleasure, because they get buns for the number of patented developments.

If the fund is not found.

If you still could not find a patron, you need to carefully approach the issue of finding a company that provides services in the field of patenting. Here are some suggestions.

Avaricious pays twice
The first rule of any business ˗ if you want to get a result, invest. So, in principle, you should not regret spending 2-3 times more by ordering to an official registered company, and not to a private person.
The fact is that a poorly executed patent will “pop up” much later - when it comes to the proceedings, and there it will be too late to “drink Borjomi”. Suddenly it turns out that the wording you understand may not be interpreted in your favor at all. In companies providing services in the field of patenting, most often there is a certain quality control system for less experienced and more experienced specialists.
Some “quality mark” is the title of “patent attorney” (the patent attorney is an expert in the field of intellectual property with more than 4 years of experience, extensive experience and passed a rather complicated exam at Rospatent).

Reputation is not everything
In the process of selecting a service company, you should not be guided only by the reputation of the company. Today, the market for intellectual property services is only developing and gaining momentum. In the absence of proper competition, some large companies that have already won a reputation may not always properly treat your order. You need to understand that the specificity of this industry is that the "marriage" is not visible to the eye.
From personal experience I’ll say that some disappointed customers of one large company operating throughout Russia will later use the services of lesser-known companies, but which treat their customers as a “gift”. This does not mean that large enterprises, in principle, do poorly and poorly perform their work, just someone as lucky.

Our patent attorneys are everything!
Before concluding a contract with a company that provides services in the field of patenting, I advise you to study the composition of its employees. Or rather, to find out whether this company has a staff or a partnership of a patent attorney. Moreover, if you want to obtain a patent for an invention, is there a patent attorney for inventions in the company, if there is an industrial design, then is there a patent attorney for industrial designs. Frankly speaking, a patent attorney is not a guarantee, but a kind of “bonus”.

Evaluate the work.
Initially, I advise you to conclude an agreement on conducting only a patent search and examination of a technical solution for the possibility of legal protection. Based on the results of your work, you will most likely have some idea of ​​the enterprise and its employees as specialists.Some criteria that need to be assessed :
1. Availability of reporting to the customer according to the search results;
2. Conducting a patent search not only in the Russian Federation, but also in other countries, when it comes to a patent for an invention or industrial design.
3. The average time for completing a patent search should not exceed two working weeks. Otherwise, you just dynamite.
4. Search quality. Ask the contractor for the texts of the selected patents, study them and evaluate the quality of the selection of material, whether it matches the subject matter of your decision, is it true that the selected information describes objects that are close in essence to your decision. It’s easy to fool around here.
5. Relax and have fun.
When you have definitely chosen a company and concluded an agreement with it for the preparation of application documents, I advise you to prepare for a long and painstaking work. Do not expect the patent examiner to write the entire application without your help, unfortunately, he cannot get into your head to understand what your development is. Be prepared to answer questions day and night. Patenting is a joint work of a specialist in the field of intellectual property and an inventor. No other way.
I hope that after reading this article, you have received useful information and use it for the benefit of your business.
PS This is my first habratopik. It was written in collaboration with my girlfriend, who, in fact, is a patent specialist. All examples are hers.