Patents for Inventors and Founders: Frequently Asked Questions

55 questions on patents for inventors and founders, answered and cited by the UpLaw editorial team.

• Can a business method be patented?
• Can an improvement to someone else's patented product be patented and sold?
• Can an inventor file a patent application without a lawyer?
• Can an inventor run the patent search themselves?
• Can a secret sale trigger the on-sale bar?
• Can software be patented after Alice?
• Does an inventor need a working prototype to file?
• Does a U.S. patent protect an invention in other countries?
• How can a product's appearance be protected three ways at once?
• How can one product implicate five different IP regimes?
• How do assignments and licenses differ?
• How do enablement and written description differ?
• How does a confidential supply agreement destroy patent rights?
• How does a court decide whether something infringes?
• How does an inventor's own disclosure become prior art?
• How do three hypotheticals draw the Alice boundary?
• How is inventorship determined?
• How long does a utility patent last?
• How long does the patent process take?
• How should a business sort its IP by regime?
• Is a pre-filing patent search required?
• Is there such a thing as a "poor man's patent"?
• What are invention-promotion firms, and how should inventors treat them?
• What are the five gates a utility patent application must clear?
• What are the three kinds of patents?
• What are the two housekeeping musts for a patent assignment?
• What counts as prior art?
• What does "patent pending" mean, and what does it do?
• What does professional patent help cost?
• What do USPTO fees actually cost?
• What duty does a search trigger?
• What four questions decide whether a patent is worth the money?
• What happens if a maintenance fee is missed?
• What happens to a patent when the inventor dies?
• What is a foreign filing license, and why does it matter?
• What is a patent, in one sentence?
• What is a sensible middle path for a budget-conscious inventor?
• What is the catch most people miss about provisionals?
• What is the difference between a patent attorney and a patent agent?
• What is the difference between a provisional and a nonprovisional application?
• What is the single most important takeaway about disclosure and sale?
• What protection does an NDA provide before filing — and what does it not?
• What question does a freedom-to-operate analysis answer?
• What remedies follow from patent infringement?
• What separates a valuable patent from an expensive lesson?
• What specific exclusions from patentability are worth knowing?
• What subject matter is categorically unpatentable?
• What surprising rule governs jointly owned patents?
• What two consequences follow from first-inventor-to-file?
• When does a provisional make sense — and when does it not?
• When does trade secrecy beat patenting?
• When do most people first meet the patent system, and why is that a problem?
• Which software claims survive the Alice test?
• Which three words in the patent grant cost people money?
• Why does time spent in examination cost exclusivity?