Don't Unintentionally Lose Your Patent Rights

Whether you are a sole inventor or part of a business team, developing a new product can be a very exciting process. Just be careful to not let the excitement and eagerness to share your idea derail your intellectual property protection. In both the U.S. and foreign countries, the patent system has statutory bars that prevent patent protection for inventions if certain events occur. In the United States, inventors have one year from the date of first public disclosure, public use, publication, sale or offer for sale of the invention in which to file at least a provisional patent application. After one year, the inventor is barred from filing a patent application for an invention. In most foreign countries, inventors typically cannot have disclosed an invention at all prior to filing a patent application.

Statutory bars exist because an invention must be novel in order to be patentable. An invention is not considered novel if any of the following occur more than twelve months before filing of a patent application: the invention was described in a patent anywhere in the world, the invention was described in a printed publication published anywhere in the world, the invention was publicly used in the U.S., or the invention was offered for sale in the U.S. 

So, how should these statutory bars affect your actions prior to filing your patent application?
 1) Only disclose your idea to those who need to know.
 2) Require execution of a Non-Disclosure Agreement by anyone with whom you share your idea.
 3) Do not offer your invention for sale—either publicly or privately.
 4) Do not post about your idea on social media or funding sites.
 5) Do not publish any article, story, data, or report disclosing any part of your invention in any format. 
 6) Do not present your invention at trade shows, conferences, or online forums.
 7) Keep detailed records of any experimental tests and conduct such tests in secret.

If your invention is publicly disclosed, published, used, or offered for sale before filing of your patent application, keep meticulous track of the dates of these events and do NOT miss your one-year U.S. bar date. 

Remember, most countries outside the U.S. do not have a one-year grace period. If you think you might be interested in foreign protection, it is wise to file the U.S. application as early as possible to avoid any statutory bar triggers. The U.S. filing date can be relied upon in foreign countries to avoid statutory bars as long as the foreign applications are filed within one year of the earliest U.S. filing.