Things To Know Before Hiring A Patent Attorney

It seems you’re eagerly looking to hire a patent attorney for your recent innovation. INNOVATION –luscious creativity for which every person is hungry!

So, when protecting your creation, certain things should be kept in mind. There is pertinent legal support that can keep your creations solely yours. It is known as patent. It saves your hard work from crooked people and organizations trying to imitate your work, formula, or design. When it comes to a patents lawyer, you should make every possible research or take reference from reliable sources. Hiring a professional IP attorney will help you to fortify your creative works and also ensures that the process meets success as soon as possible.

Therefore, when hiring an IP lawyer make sure that he/she understand the needs of the business and determines your best interests.

Understand what you want

There are different types of patent lawyers available. Some are known for their technical specialty while others are specialized in specific areas like engineering, IT, etc. So, you should know what you want. Depending on your requirement, an IP attorney must be consulted. It is not decent to blame a lawyer (even if he/she is highly qualified in the profession) who does not belong to your required field. You should know whom you are hiring and what are his/her specializations. Better if you can contact a specialized law firm for the same.

Questions to ask

On the path to finding a competent attorney, these simple questions can make your objective easier. These are as follows:

• Does the attorney performs proper research before signing the case, or just delegates the task to a professional searcher/third party?
• Will the lawyer provide a written or spoken patentability opinion? The opinion provided must be able to compare the claims based on the relevancy before the patents were discovered.
• What are the lawyer’s legal background and experience in the industry? How many patents have been written by the attorney? How many of them have made it through the entire application process and issues by the United States Patent and Trademark Office?
• To what extent you will be able to participate and assist the attorney, i.e. does the lawyer or firm handling these types of delicate jobs collaborate and keeps the clients updated about every single movement?

Getting over these questions will ensure that your patent is well protected and the claims will be written properly if in case it has been challenged in court.

Myth buster – Be the first to file

A patent is always awarded to the person or establishment when filed or publish at the earliest. This rule is completely changed as per the new laws. In the past, different inventors used to file separate patents on the same subject and they were judged based on the time of application. The person (even if he/she is not the genuine owner) who filed at the earliest, grabbed the patent from the original owner. To this day, the application process requires maintaining other actions as well. They have specific deadlines and if met within the period, the patent is awarded to the same person or business. Just jotting down an idea before the other party isn’t going to let you win.

As a basic rule of thumb, hire a patents lawyer who is registered and practices before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A patent lawyer needs to be skilled in all aspects of the law covering patents and IP rights of actual inventors. Conducting thorough searches to ensure that an invention or creation has not been represented and patented before is the first and most important responsibility of a patent lawyer.