Patentrail

United States Patent No. US 9,300,847 B2 was granted to the author/inventor on March 29, 2016 for his invention of Digital Camera Lens Guard and Use Extender. In a Do-It-Yourself manner the author/inventor initiated the applications for the patent, from inception to the final grant.

PatenTRAIL shows in actual pages the certificate granting patent rights to the author/inventor. The Patent, being complete with the processing requirements of a bona fide application, is used as a goal for developing this book. The author/inventor, without any previous background pertaining to patents, learned many details in the prosecution of the patent applications. After the fact. The phrase has an absolute meaning in the application for a patent. One does not learn the fate of an application until after it has gone through prosecution in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Only then that one learns whether the invention for which an application has been filed is patentable or not.

An unwary would-be inventor would have spent an enormous sum of money first before learning the fate of the invention, not to mention the anxious and tense days and months lost during prosecution of the application. That is the case if the would-be inventor is not aware that an application for a patent can be initiated without the services of dedicated professionals whose jobs are solely dealing with patent applications and their prosecutions. This book comes in handy as a source model for filing patent applications but not as a teaching tool.

... at a cost of $800 or Less. This part of the book title is right, it is not a misquote. The cost of the patent described in this book includes filing the Provisional Application and the Non-provisional Application. The book includes title validation to show components of the cost. A financial fact about the cost of the subject patent, if the author/inventor has to do it again, is an option to dispense with the filing of the Provisional Application and saving $125 in filing fee, further reducing the cost to $675. The book implies why the filing of the Provisional Application is not an absolute necessity for securing a patent unless a competing claim exists.

The Provisional Application for the Patent includes the Application Data Sheet accompanied with rough specifications and crude drawings. As the author found out later, the application did not have to be in so much details as it has been, for it could be abandoned unless it is followed by the filing of a Non-provisional Application within one year. In other cases, if a subsequent Non-provisional Application is filed referring to the same invention in the Provisional Application, the former must have a cross reference to the latter. If a Non-provisional Application is not subsequently filed, the Provisional Application is abandoned and the filer loses the filing fee of $125.

The Non-provisional Application for a Patent is where the brunt of the USPTO's scrutinizing power becomes evident. Filling the form provides no room for error, USPTO lets applicant know if one exists. If additional forms are required, each of them may need some time to prepare. Writing the specifications takes a considerable length of time. Without the necessary tools, drawings which must conform with strict requirements are enough to discourage would-be inventors. Writing claims spells special problems.

The most scrutinizing phase that the invention had to come through was when the USPTO pitted it for similarity, against millions of other inventions already existing in the market including those in different industries and regions, as evidenced by the search pages included in the book. Nevertheless, Digital Camera Lens Guard and Use Extender survived.