No. An idea by itself cannot be patented. U.S. patent law protects four things: processes, machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter. A concept, a goal, a business plan, a desired result, or a wish for a product that does not exist yet falls...
You cannot file a patent application on an idea. You file on a described implementation of one, and most of the work of getting a patent is the work of converting the first thing into the second. The sequence runs: write the invention down in enough detail that a...
Finding a patent that looks like your invention is the normal outcome of a good search, not the end of the project. Close is not the same as blocking. Before you quit or redesign, you have to answer two separate questions that inventors collapse into one: can I still...
“Patent pending” means one thing: an application covering the product is on file with the patent office and has not yet issued or been abandoned. That is the entire legal content of the phrase. It gives you no right to stop anyone from copying the product,...
Roughly 3.5 million patent applications are filed worldwide every year, and fewer than one in five of them is filed at the USPTO. China alone accounts for close to half. If your prior art search stops at US records, you have looked at a minority of the documents an...
