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What is an information disclosure statement in a patent application, and why is it crucial to your patent application? An information disclosure statement is a statement that you must make in a [...]

The US government IP Offices are responding to the coronavirus outbreak by adjusting rules and requirements to allow for increased safety of applicants and users, and of the examining attorneys [...]

A continuation patent application is a patent application that lets you, the patent applicant, pursue patent claims that are based on the same invention description and drawings as another [...]

Today, January 15, 2019, is the 100th anniversary of the Great Molasses Flood, which happened in the North End neighborhood of Boston.  Over 2 million gallons of molasses burst from a storage [...]

The ordinary course of patent examination is slow.  Typically, it takes two to three years, or more, to have a patent application allowed, or to receive a final rejection from the USPTO.  For [...]

Design patents protect the ornamental appearance of an object.  With a design patent application, you can protect the shape of the object, the surface ornamentation of the object, or both.  A [...]

To prepare, file, and prosecute a patent application to get a patent granted costs money.  The costs fall into a few categories: cost for preparing the application (see my post on application [...]

Software can be protected with patents.  The source code of the software is not protectable with patents (though it may be protectable with copyright), and neither is the object code or the [...]

Groundhog Day is a tradition celebrated mostly in the US and Canada, yearly on Feb. 2nd, in which if a groundhog sees its shadow, winter will persist, and if the groundhog doesn’t, then [...]

A patent examiner at the USPTO will sometimes send an Election/Restriction Requirement in response to a patent application.  This is an assertion by the examiner that the application claims more [...]