Top 10 Tasks to Increase the Likelihood of Getting Patent Approval for a New Product

• Develop a working prototype of the new product.  You will learn what works and what does not work, and the patent attorney can focus a patent application on the structure and functionality of the working prototype.

• Don’t sell or publicly disclose your new product until after you have filed a patent application.  If you sell or publicly disclose your product more than 1-year before filing a patent application, you will be barred from obtaining a patent on the product.

• Select a patent attorney with at least 10-years of experience, or a patent attorney that is supervised by another patent attorney with at least 10-years of experience.

• Select a patent attorney that has positive Google ratings from existing clients.  

• Complete an Invention Disclosure Form provided by a patent attorney which provides detailed information on the new product and the problem being solved by the product.  The patent attorney will utilize this information in performing a patent search and drafting the patent application.

• Provide detailed schematics of the new product to the patent attorney.

• Have a patent search performed to determine the three-closest prior patents.  For a product to be patentable, it must have new structure or a new combination of components.

• Make sure the patent application teaches how to make and use the new product.  The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office requires this level of disclosure in a patent.

• Carefully review the claims (which define the scope of the invention) in the patent application to ensure that the claims cover your new product.

• After filing the patent application, discuss each Office Action received from the patent examiner with the patent attorney to determine the best strategy for responding to the Office Action.