Q: How do you file a patent?
If you have an item that you want to patent, what are the steps to get a patent, or where would you go to get a patent?
And can the patent include more than one person for the creation of the object?
A:
To get a patent, you need to reach out to a patent attorney, and the patent attorney will take care of it for you.
If you do not know a patent attorney, reach out to any attorney that you know, and he will put you in touch with a patent attorney who should be able to help you.
A:
A patent is obtained by submitting an application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The USPTO website has a lot of information about filing patents and what should be submitted in your application. (example: https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information-concerning-patents#heading-5)
Anyone can obtain a patent for themselves by submitting an application. Although many people will suggest that a person use a patent attorney because submitting patent applications includes specialized knowledge and mistakes can be made so the rights to the invention can be lost, or not as good as they could be.
In general, in your application you will need to submit a specification, which includes claims. The specification is a detailed description of your patent, including drawings. The claims are a written description of the scope of your invention. This sounds redundant, but the claims are much shorter than the detailed description earlier in the specification, and are often worded differently than a normal description used earlier in the specification. Also there is strategy when writing the claims to obtain a very broad claim or a very specific claim, and also groupings of claims.
If you look at a patent, which can be found on Google Patents or the USPTO search function (google “USPTO patent search”), an approved and published patent is what will be submitted in an initial application (minus any changes that occurred during the process of getting the patent approved, although the format and included information is basically the same).
An invention can include more than one inventor. This is common. It is important that all the inventors are identified in the application. Each inventor will need to file an oath/declaration during the application process, where the oath/declaration states he/she is an inventor of the invention.
If you are researching on your own, the USPTO website, Nolo do it yourself books, or reading blogs/websites written by patent attorneys/law firms are a useful start for your own research.
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