Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
- 503-482-3871
- Guy Letourneau PE US Patent Agent
- Mon - Fri: 9 am- 5 pm
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
• A plant patent covers the entire living organism, everything both above and below ground,not just useful portions of a plant such as edible parts, leaves for smoking, or structural materials for lumber.
• Most patent drawings use line drawings, but unless your plant is entirely black and white color at all stages of its growth, the plant patent application will need full-color sketches or color photos.
• You can include a genetic sequences (such as amino acids and nucleotides) by uploading a “sequence listing,” which is a data file in a standardized format.
• A patented plant is a thing created by a one or more human inventors – even by accident, BUT the plant cannot have come into being on its own by an accident of nature, or just found in the wild.
• You must be able to reproduce the plant asexually, such as by a graft, to prove that the distinctive attributes of the plant are stable and reproducible from one generation to the next and are not just a random, one-off genetic mutation.
• If your plant application looks and reads like something tasty, the examiner will probably request a sample.
• Most issued patents are utility patents. Utility patent claims are harder to work around than design patent claims.
• A utility patent can cover structures and physical components and how they are connected to each other or how they interoperate.
• A utility patent can also cover processes, methods, recipes, treatments to materials that change their properties (e.g, vulcanizing rubber or case hardening or induction hardening of metals.)
• A utility invention provides anything “useful” to society, including “entertainment.” There are a huge bunch of patented mechanisms which never found any industrial use but are nonetheless really fascinating to watch. Some of these were even successfully marketed as toys.
• Utility patents include an issue fee and also maintenance fees that must be paid at 3½, 7½, and 11½ years after the patent grant.
• Design patents protect the “ornamentality” of a product, which is what it looks like: a distinctive shape that people seek it out for its looks.
• Design patents protect your “style” in fashion accessories, clothing, car hood ornaments and rims, containers for drinks and cosmetics, distinctive handles on home appliances, etc.
• A design patent does NOT protect the structure or function of an invention. You need a utility patent to do that. If you get a design patent granted for your invention but advertise its functionality, (e.g, how it’s safer, faster, or does something useful,) you will undermine your own patent rights.
• If you get a design patent, others may still make and sell other things that look different from your invention but provide the same functions.
• Design patents require an issue fee but no other payments to the US Patent Office after issue.