The initials AR are used for many dozens of things from acid reflux to amateur radio. If you mean automated rifle- then yes you can seek patents on the workings of a weapon. You would need to have an idea that would not be obvious to one skilled in the art of designing automated rifles. You... View More

Patents are intended in reward inventors. If you did not invent the product, you cannot patent it.

You may be able to patent an improvement to the product as long as whatever you do is not obvious to someone that designs spray bottles. But you would need to invent this or pay someone to... View More

PATENT TERM

Patent term is more confusing than it should be. The one part that is simple, is that patent term is not a function of the technology. There is not a way for the applicant to apply to extend the patent term (unlike trademarks or copyrights). (but as noted below, there are... View More

First you may want to consult with a patent attorney to see if the patent that concerns you actually is still in force. I may have lapsed early for failure to pay the maintenance fee and contacting them may cause them to belatedly revive it.

But if you are sure that you want to contact... View More

Best starting place is to do some searching using Google Patents and the USPTO Search tools. My slide set at http://bit.ly/Patent_Searching has some useful tips.

Once you find one relevant patent on the topic, that one should lead you to other patents. Those patents will lead you to... View More

I used to work for a firm that defended the original Bell telephone patent court (long long before I was born). So I am well aware that improvements to a particular device such as a telephone may continue to come out for a hundred years or so. It is possible that your patent claims one set of... View More

Patents provide a heavy hammer to punish unauthorized use of an idea -- but only for a limited time.

Trade secret protection is valuable too. Ask Uber -- they paid $245 million to Google for theft of trade secrets on self-driving cars. The person that stole the ideas was criminally... View More

It is possible to go partway through the process with your proprietary information as a secret. However, if you let the patent application publish or you pay an issue fee to get a granted patent then your information becomes public knowledge. You have patent rights to protect the unauthorized use... View More

I suggest as a first step that you read some patents on bandages so that you can see the level of detail that is common and get a good feel for what sort of innovations have already been patented. \

My slide set on searching tricks may be helpful. http://bit.ly/Patent_Searching... View More

With respect to a printed publication or a patent application, the impact is not limited by national borders.

There may be instances where the US laws on the one year grace period means somethings are not prior art in the US but are prior art in other countries (like a post by the... View More

First Question is whether you will be doing anything in the United States.

If your clients are not taking delivery in the US and you are not making the product in the US, then you may not need to worry about a US patent.

On the other hand, looking for US patents is often a quick... View More

Step one is you need to work with a patent attorney to dive deeply into the patent and make a detailed comparison of the independent claims to your product. This is often called a claim chart and this work is called clearance or freedom-to-operate analysis.

If you clearly do not have one... View More

The general type of patent is an issued United States Utility Patent (not a design patent and not a plant patent).

The claims are written a number of different ways but they cover articles of manufacture that have a feature to protect electrical components from excessive electrical surges.... View More

I agree that you need to have the entire agreement looked at by an attorney that is familiar with NDA agreements. Sometimes there can be interplays between a definition on one page and a section on another page so providing advice on a snippet of the agreement can lead to trouble.

Given... View More

US Patent No. 7631814 for Portable Sports Equipment Scent Dispersion Apparatus is listed in Google Patents as expired for failure to pay a maintenance fee. If you are the patent owner and the failure to pay the maintenance fee was unintentional, this can be fixed.

Ideally, a patent... View More

I am sorry that your father is no longer with you.

With respect to filing a patent, if the rights to the invention were passed on to a third party, then those rights can be used to file a patent even after an inventor's death. There are processes for handling this.

You can... View More

This is not a patent issue.

Kevin E Flynn

It is very possible that a patent on a rim would be a design patent which might elude a text based search.

If you can view their truck rim in a store, it may have the patent number on the rim or on the packaging. That is the low tech and easy way to check.

A second good way to... View More

There are several questions to be answered. This will require a patent attorney but you should know the range of issues.

1) Has the patent expired at the end of its term or lapsed early for failure to pay a maintenance fee?

2) Will the patent expire soon so that you can start... View More

Google is not the definitive record. If you have anything that looks odd, you need to go to the official record which is accessible by https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair

I hope that this helps.

Kevin E Flynn