These appear to be a set of three US design patents and one US utility patent. A United States patent is effective against people that make, use, sell, or offer to sell an infringing product in the US.

So a US patent can be used against a product made in China and imported into the US, or... View More

A patent that expired last week might have some value as you can sue folks for infringing the patent for up to six years earlier than the date of the law suit.

So even a patent that has been expired for a year or two may have some value if there was extensive use in the final years that... View More

I do not see this as a patent question. I am not sure whether you have a contract issue or a trust and estate/wills issue. You need to review the reason why the checks should be made out in your name and then select an appropriate area of law within Justia. Right now, your question is going out... View More

This tool might be helpful. Just as you record your ownership of a house with the local county records department, you record the movement of patent rights from an inventor into a company. If you know the name of the company you invested in, you can look for that company name as the assignee in... View More

Your question as conveyed to the attorneys to answer did not include the patent numbers. The limits of the scope of patent coverage is defined by the precise wording of the claims. Reading the claims should give you a good idea of the claimed scope. You may need to check with a patent attorney... View More

The USPTO Examiners have the option to say -- whoa -- you are asking me to do more than one patent's worth of work as there are more than one invention here. They can request that you seek to restrict the current application to just one claim cluster and leave other claim clusters for you to... View More

It is impossible to know for sure if a patent application is in the pipeline but not yet granted (you might see a marking that says patent pending but that is not legally required).

To the extent that there is an issued design patent, then a competent company will list the patent on the... View More

Your short question includes many key questions of patent law.

1) You do not infringe a patent. You infringe one or more specific independent claims (ones that start with no reference to another claim) and possibly some dependent claims (a claim that adds additional limitations to at least... View More

Mr. Mlynek's answer is correct but I want to make sure you understand the consequences of the path you choose.

Let me step through the basic process. Assume that the existing patent covers a WIDGET and you have an improved WIDGET.

1) You do not infringe a patent. You... View More

You may want to look for some recently issued patents that are in the same general field. See my slides on patent searching http://bit.ly/Patent_Searching

The reason to do this is to find a patent attorney that works with individual inventors to write solid patent applications in your... View More

Congratulations on inventing a revolutionary idea.

The patent system is designed to provide a reward for inventors (or their employers) for a LIMITED time. While the patent systems are not identical, they all have a provision to have patents time out. Long ago, the timer was set to when... View More

I do not know why you think this personal tent is covered by a patent. But, you can do some looking using tips from my slide set on searching. http://bit.ly/Patent_Searching.

Note that a patent application originally filed overseas may come to the US 30 months later under the Patent... View More

I checked the small entity box on one of the first micro entity submissions I made as part of being a micro entity is that you qualify as a small entity. That confused people at the USPTO.

So if you are going to pay small entity fees, check small entity. If you are going to pay micro... View More

I think you need to look at actual patents that have been issued for apps. The Supreme Court does not like mere efforts to organize human behavior with a marketplace or other app to modify human behavior. You need to show that what you did would impress an engineer that makes apps.... View More

The patent history would be available from USPTO Public PAIR. This would be the activity during the application for the patent and any responses from the patent examiner for this design patent application.

If all you want is the recorded assignment history, you can go to a separate... View More

Your question as passed on to lawyers was garbled. So I am guessing at what you asked.

It is hard to believe that there is a non-expired patent that covers using a magnet to close portions of a shirt. The good news is that I am not aware of any synonyms to the word "magnet"... View More

Josh,

It may be helpful for you to do some initial searching so that you can understand what sort of patents are granted for software. See search tips at http://bit.ly/Patent_Searching.

The US Supreme Court has issued several opinions in the last decade that really closed down the... View More

Using your example with respect to a golf bag. If the sole difference was that you used off-the shelf sheets of flexible bamboo leather substitute and made a bag from that -- then you would have a hard time getting a utility patent. Substituting one product for another where the modifications to... View More

The question is whether those of skill in the art looking at Pat. No. 9,726,971 and everything previously known in all public writings in all languages from the beginning of time would consider your modification of the process in 9726971 to be a non-obvious modification. Notice that the pool of... View More

Mr. Thomas,

This is hard. I know some firms that help flesh out ideas and make prototypes. The engineers often become co-inventors but they will assign the patent rights over to the client that is paying them. Good folks normally have a range of things that they do and they are not the... View More