As the saying goes, a business owner has to wear many hats. After you've owned a business for a while, you really come to understand how true this is. Even if you have employees who do a lot of your day-to-day marketing, ordering, and accounting, the responsibility for these tasks is ultimately your own.
If you are starting to feel overwhelmed with the many hats you're required to wear, you have stumbled upon a good resource. We created this website to share knowledge about all of those hats — all of those roles you have to play as a business person. Start reading, and you'll not only gain helpful advice, but also realize that you're not alone.
What Does A Patent Management Service Do?
Do you think that you can benefit from using a patent management service? It will help to know what they can do for you.
What Are The Different Types Of Patents?
You may not be aware that there are actually two different types of patents that people typically apply for, with each of them serving a different purpose. A utility patent is the type of patent that people typically think of since it covers the usefulness and functional aspects that a product has. A design patent helps protect the look of a product, which includes things that do not alter how it functions and are purely for design purposes.
How Do You Know If An Idea Is Patentable?
Many people turn to a patent management service to determine if an idea is patentable because a lot of work needs to go into it. The idea needs to be something that is novel and useful; one of the hard parts is determining if an idea is actually new. This involves thoroughly researching a patent to make sure that an existing product does not exist, and that there is not already a patent for an idea that has not yet been produced. If there is a similar product already out there, you must be able to explain how your product in particular is different from other products out there. You may have invented a new way to do things and must be able to explain how that method is different and would deserve a patent.
What Makes An Idea Novel?
Getting a patent requires that an idea is novel, meaning that the idea must not have been used in any prior art. Prior art is a legal term that refers to other patents, a patent application, a printed description of the invention in a formal publication, or an existing process that uses the invention. As you can see, this is why the research of new patents can be so resource-intensive to make sure that it doesn't already exist in prior art.
What Makes An Idea Useful?
It is much easier to explain if an idea is useful. An invention is typically a solution to a problem, which is what makes the idea. If the invention actually works and does something, then that is typically what you need to prove that an idea is useful. The use case for the invention must be obvious as well.
For more information, contact a patent management service near you.