Technological Innovation as
an Evolutionary Process
5/1/2004
12:26 PM
side note on
ownership
I
think that the patent office should
a)
get a clue what is prior
art and what is not or
b)
do away with the whole idea of software
patents
- a software engineer (2004)
Paul –
I have read and agree with most you have seen.
You cannot imagine the costs associated with maintaining an IP portfolio, even under the more stringent of financial conditions. I know as I deal with this every day.
I agree with the assessment on provisional ($80) & conversion fees ($5K) as you have described below, but that is not even the tip of the iceberg as those are just filing fee costs.
The real money comes in having an attorney or one skilled generate billable hours writing the document, downstream prosecution costs to derive issued claims and the maintenance fees and translation costs associated with any ex-US filings.
The costs to get a patent issued
(with bare minimum prosecution costs) in US, Aus,
The problem is patent writing skills as there is a certain language that methods and utility patents require. I have been involved in patents for almost 20 years and still could not do this (not even at the provisional stage any more). The cheapest way for this to be done that I have found is having an in-house attorney or patent agent and they are not cheap. Also, depending on the type of patent, a provisional almost gets you nothing (except filing date) unless you don’t have any data and then you only have the year for conversion (another round of legal writing and costs). Anyway enough on that soapbox.
A licensing option to
individuals/farmers for potential technology is only one way to go and this can
be initiated many different ways and at different levels.