Patents?

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Electroenthusiast

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What is the Procedure to get Patents(/How people get Patents?)? How to know whether that particular idea was patented earlier by someone else before? How much does it Cost? Is there any Website For it?
 
Patents

A lot depends upon where you live, You should fill in your location with something meaningful.
 
Unless you have a lot of money then its not worth getting a patent.

Contesting a patent will bankrupt the average person - if you're a big company and can afford to contest every breach then yes its worth it.
 
Yes patents are very costly, you need a patent lawyer only a fool trys to write their own patent.
The real cost is enforcement.

Edison and the like filed thousands of patents, Edison was great at busting other folks patents and filing them as his own. These were almost a century ago, things are very different now.
 
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really? i owed lot on Edison...i treated him as my Role Model, but after reading this...feels like it would be a wrong decision!
 
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Patents are very useful if you are a young entreprenuer aiming to start or grow a business. Investors will look for certain key ingredients in a young business in order to invest their money, and one of these is ownership of patents.

In North America, the typical cost to get a Utility Patent (a patent of an invention of some sort) is about $10,000 in legal fees but can certainly have a large range around that figure. I know of one friend who got his own patent by writing his own application and doing all the work himself. His cost was only the patent office fees and he was not only successful in getting his patent, but actually received a compliment from the patent examiner for doing such good job on it.

It is also possible in North America to patent a "design" in the sense of the appearance or styling of an object. This is called a Design Patent, and the typical fees for getting this type of patent are considerably less than with a utility patent. On the order of one or two thousand dollars even if done through a patent attorney.

Large companies collect patents because they use them as currency when dealing with other companies. When you have a large number of patents and then someone comes along and claims that you are using one of their patented inventions, you can threaten them back the same way using your large collection of patents and in the end you may agree to trade some patent rights, or cross-license or some other compromise. So patents can be very useful when defending yourself.
 
I was always confused when reading about Edison. Everything developed in the Edison Labs, was patented under the company name. I could never figure out what the man invented, and what was invented in his labs by other people. Pretty sure that he was all business man, and did very little of his own work. Definitely not worthy of all the history books, which seldom mention the works of Nikola Tesla.
 
really? i owed lot on Edison...i treated him as my Role Model, but after reading this...feels like it would be a wrong decision!

Yeah, he wasn't very nice to Nikola Tesla either. Edison promised Tesla he would pay him a large sum of money if he constructed this certain thing for him. When Tesla completed it and asked him for the money, Edison said "Don't you know an American joke?"

Why not have Tesla as a role model?
 
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I can see that working if the person that obtains the patent then seeks out outside investors that have the affluence to back the patent in court. Of course one would expect that since outside investors are involved that the patent holder would waive much of the would be financial gain. Be that as it may, this may be a better alternative to just not following through. The dreamer who takes the risk, usually gets a good piece of the pie.

Albeit Lancaster's advice is sound and pretty much correct, he does not account for the determined and those who find alternatives. There are always alternatives, and the smart ones find them. I would never discourage a person attempting to better themselves. All I can say is, know what you are doing or get ready to feel the bitter taste of real business.
 
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