What is Public Disclosure? Impacts of Public Disclosure On IP Protection

As mentioned in our post “IP Prep Before a Big Event”, public disclosure may impact your intellectual property rights.
            The U.S. patent system encourages sharing of intellectual property to help facilitate technological advances and in turn provides limited protection of this intellectual property.
            In the spirit of encouraging people to share information via the patent system, there is a limited window of time that you are eligible to apply for patent protection of an idea. For the U.S., this window of time is a one year countdown that starts from when an invention is publicly disclosed, though the rules vary from country to country.
            What counts as public disclosure? Well, public disclosure broadly refers to some form of communication that makes your intellectual property accessible to the public. Public disclosure comes in many forms—from printed publications to the Internet to offers of sale. Basically, unless invention information is communicated in a private and confidential manner, it may be considered public.
            In view of the above, one strategy to avoid a filing time crunch is to simply file for patent protection before public disclosure.
            By filing for patent protection prior to public disclosure, it will be clear that this public disclosure of the invention cannot be used against the patent application during prosecution. Moreover, filing for patent protection can be a selling point for both customers and investors, and may ward off potential copy-cats, among other benefits.
            So, when preparing for a big event where you will be discussing a new product or idea, consider the benefits of filing for patent protection ahead of time. Filing ahead of time can give you an ease of mind when discussing your ideas and may make prosecution of the patent easier down the road.

Popular posts from this blog

Surprising Uses for Oobleck

Image
Oobleck is a common name for a non-Newtonian fluid comprising cornstarch and water. Named after a substance humorously described in Dr. Seuss’s classic children’s story, Bartholomew and the Ooblek, the cornstarch and water concoction is frequently used in children’s science classes as a fun way to learn about fluid mechanics. You may have fond memories, yourself, of playing with oobleck as a youth. Oobleck behaves as a fluid when touched gently, but becomes hard as a solid when hit with great velocity. For example, a person could run across a swimming pool of oobleck without getting their feet wet. However, if a person stood still on the oobleck, then they would slowly sink. Because oobleck is a children’s plaything and because of its simple recipe (cornstarch and water), one may be surprised to learn that inventors have attempted to patent serious industrial uses for the material. As an example, one current patent application, US 2015/0016885 (now abandoned), is for a system of fi
Read more

Dispensing with the Formalities: Ex Parte Quayle Actions

Image
Checking my email after work one day, I was greeted with some unfortunate news: the application I was prosecuting had received yet another Office action.   Frustrated, I couldn’t resist skimming the substance of the rejection.   After all, like any patent practitioner, I thought my arguments were pretty irrefutable.   The news only got worse… or so it appeared.   The Office action was something called an “ Ex Parte Quayle action.”   Having never received one of these actions, I started mentally preparing myself to pull out the MPEP and research some arcane rejection. To my surprise, I didn’t find myself knee-deep in case law the following day.   Ex Parte Quayle actions, while somewhat inconvenient, are far from insurmountable.   In short, an Ex Parte Quayle action or “Quayle action” is issued when an application has objections remaining as to formal matters, but is otherwise allowable.   Accordingly, the mailing of these actions closes prosecution on the merits of the appl
Read more

Adaptive Headlight IP

Image
The recent Infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden affects many things, but one aspect that affects the automotive world is adaptive headlights.  As noted by Jalopnik puts it somewhat crudely, this means “our headlights will suck way less” (link to https://jalopnik.com/finally-our-headlights-will-suck-way-less-1848067412 ). But with this sudden change, adaptive headlights in the US may be in for a particular messy IP situation since many companies may have considered it was not necessary to protect their adaptive headlight innovations in the US because of the 50-year old rule preventing such technology. Recent patents in the field from applicants such as Lumileds and Arex indicate that smaller players and startups may be able to break into the market which is expected to explode in the next few years once the final rules are implemented.  For those in the industry that have typically avoided US patent filings in the adaptive headlamp area, they may want to rethink th
Read more