How to get patent in software [With Pictures]



Last updated : Aug 27, 2022
Written by : Stanton Roling
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How to get patent in software

Can a patent be obtained for software?

Under the current state of U.S. patent law, patents cannot specifically lay claim to software. For example a patent claim that recites "a software that performs functions X, Y, Z, etc." would not be allowed. However, a patent may lay claim to a computer system and processes performed by it.

How do I find software patents?

  1. Patent Public Search.
  2. USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT)
  3. USPTO Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT)
  4. Global Dossier.
  5. Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR)
  6. Public Search Facility.
  7. Patent and Trademark Resource Centers (PTRCs)

How much does it cost to get a patent?

A patent can cost from $900 for a do-it-yourself application to between $5,000 and $10,000+ with the help of patent lawyers. A patent protects an invention and the cost of the process to get the patent will depend on the type of patent (provisional, non-provisional, or utility) and the complexity of the invention.

How long does a software patent last?

Patent protection for software lasts 20 years.

Do patents expire?

Patent Expiration Utility patents expire four, eight, and 12 years after issuance of the patent if the maintenance fees are not paid at these points in time. The patent actually expires at 3.5 years, 7.5 years, and 11.5 years, but there is a six-month grace period in which to pay the maintenance fee.

How do you create a patent?

  1. Keep a Written Record of Your Invention. Record every step of the invention process in a notebook.
  2. Make Sure Your Invention Qualifies for Patent Protection.
  3. Assess the Commercial Potential of Your Invention.
  4. Conduct a Thorough Patent Search.
  5. Prepare and File an Application With the USPTO.

How long does it take to get a patent?

In the United States, it takes an average of 24 months from the filing of a patent application to get a patent.

Is it difficult to get a patent?

Since patents are legal articles, they can be somewhat difficult to obtain. Patent applications vary from country to country, depending on what you're trying to get a patent for.

What is the cheapest way to get a patent?

  1. Do-It-Yourself (Draft it and File it Yourself)
  2. Cost of Filing It Yourself.
  3. Still To Expensive?
  4. Cost of Filing It Yourself.
  5. Fiverr & Other Low Cost Options.
  6. If Budgets Allow - The Better Option Is to Use an Attorney.
  7. The Cost of An Attorney.

What is poor man's patent?

A poor man's patent is essentially writing out a description of your invention and then mailing that written description to yourself. This postmarked envelope supposedly acts to create the date of your invention as the date this written description was postmarked.

What are the types of patents?

What kind of patent do you need? There are three types of patents - Utility, Design, and Plant. Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof.

Can software be patented in India?

Are Software Patents Allowed in India? Software by itself is not patentable in India. However, software can be patented if it is part of an invention that is both inventive and capable of industrial use. In the Patents (Amendments) Act 2002, it is mentioned that computer programme per se is not patentable.

Can I patent an idea?

Many people ask: can ideas be patented? The short answer is no. Unfortunately, despite what you may have heard from late night television commercials, there is no effective way to protect an idea with any form of intellectual property protection. Copyrights protect expression and creativity, not innovation.

Can I buy a patent?

How to buy patents. It is sometimes possible to buy a patent outright. If you wish to buy a patent, you will have to identify its legal owner and make them an offer. If a business owns the patent, you can negotiate to buy the company and acquire the patent that way.

How Do patents Work?

A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application.

Who grants patent in India?

The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) generally known as the Indian Patent Office, is an agency under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade which administers the Indian law of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks.

Should I patent my product?

Patents are not legally required before you sell your product or profit from your idea. There are many products and services sold in the United States that are not patent-protected. However, a patent is necessary if you want to prevent others from making marketing, selling, or importing your invention.

Is copyright a patent?

A patent protects new inventions, processes, or scientific creations, a trademark protects brands, logos, and slogans, and a copyright protects original works of authorship.

What is the first step to getting a patent?

  1. Work on your invention and document the entire process.
  2. Confirm that you have an invention, not merely an idea.
  3. Consider whether your invention is commercially viable.
  4. Hire a patent attorney.
  5. Submit a provisional patent application.
  6. Submit the application.

What is an example of a patent?

Examples of inventions protected by utility patents are a microwave oven, genetically engineered bacteria for cleaning up oil spills, a computerized method of running cash management accounts, and a method for curing rubber.


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How to get patent in software


Comment by Betty Srader

good morning in this video we're going to go over how to patent software you shall learn what exactly are software patents and how are they different from other types of patents and how to actually go about filing your software patent application and if you stick around and watch this video to the end I will show you exactly where you can download a free template and free information to get started writing your own software patent application my name is Brad flash I've been filing patent applications for over 11 years I'm a registered patent agent with the US Patent and Trademark Office I filed over 500 different patent applications and a variety of areas including many software patent applications and I'm a certified licensing professional so Before we jump into software patents let's talk a little bit about the different types of patents you can choose from when you have a new invention if your new invention was a new type of plant you would file a plant patent if your new invention was a new design like a new coke bottle design you would file a design patent what we're going to be talking about here for software patents are called utility patents which mean they're something that has a unique and usefulness to them and so there's different types of utility patent applications so it's a provisional patent application a non provisional continuation CIP and divisional and that's just a few of them if you want to learn more about the different types of patent applications you can visit patent file org so software patents or software patent applications are a type of utility patent applications now utility patent applications are either compositions of matter so these are things like widgets or tools the traditional things you think of when you think of a new patent or a new invention but they can also include things like methods so in the past say a new chemical process our new biotechnology process those would all be protected as method patents and that's been you know around for 100 or so years here in the United States recently within the past you know a few decades people have been able to get patents on methods performed by software and so that's where the term software patents come from they're basically any methods that are performed by a computer and so software can be protected two different ways the software code is actually protected under copyright and so that's really easy to protect your software code by copyright but if your software code is more than just code you know it's more than just a website or more than just a blog it's actually a really neat piece of software that can perform a new and useful method or function then that would also fall under the patentable category and so you could actually protect it by software I mean by a copyright and by a software patent you should know that it's getting harder and harder to get software patents allowed you know ten or fifteen years ago you could probably get a really broad software patent allowed on say a method of purchasing an item online adding it to a shopping cart nowadays it's you know very hard to get those type of broad software patents and rightfully so I think a lot of people abuse the software patent system and so who uses software patents all the big technologies company all the big technology companies do and it's probably one of the most valuable type of patents you can have at least nowadays it's important to know the best time to file your software patents a lot of developers don't realize this but if you publish your software online or you make it available for sale you can actually block yourself from getting a patent if you don't already have your patent filed first so I always tell people you should really try to get your patent filed first at least file a provisional patent application it's very cheap and easy to do do that before you launch your product or launch your software because you might lose your patent rights if you don't follow it in that order now in the United States we get this twelve month grace period which means if you want patent protection in the United States and you did launch your software first that's okay you have 12 months from the date your software first went public to get your patent filed and so this is a typical timeline if you have your idea you should do a kind of basic patent search make sure no one else is doing what you think is novel build your prototype or your alpha or your beta version of your software then file your provisional patent before you show anyone or have it available to the public once your provisional patents filed then you can do your alpha or your beta launch or a soft launch to see how well your software is doing maybe find some customers find some investors build up some buzz about your software product then file your non provisional patent that has to be filed within a year from the date you filed your provisional patent and that's kind of the real patent that goes through the patent process and ultimately issues with a patent number and then your patent will expire 20 years from the date you filed it so there's only two ways that you can apply for a software patent or any patent for that matter in the United States you can hire a registered patent agent or patent attorney to write it for you on the cheaper end that's going to be about a thousand dollars we've paid all the way up to $40,000 at the University where I work for a very complicated software patent the second option is to do it yourself as the inventor you can write and file your own patent application yourself and I'll show you how to do that in video 2 which is coming up next if you do want to download a software patent template or see what different examples of software patents look like you can go to our website patent file org slash software so again a video 2 will show you how to file a software patent and what the important things are that should be included in a software patent if you have any questions here's my email address please email me and if you like this video if it was useful to you please hit the like button thank you


Thanks for your comment Betty Srader, have a nice day.
- Stanton Roling, Staff Member


Comment by Rosario

thank you [Applause] so thank you all for coming today my name is Steve Bachman I'm a patent attorney I've been working in intellectual property and patent law for about 17 years here in Silicon Valley my backgrounds of left law engineering I was a software / hardware engineer at national semiconductor for a few years before I went to law school as a patent attorney I've worked with all types of companies I worked with larger companies like Microsoft Sony Dell have also worked with a lot of startups and that's been my focus over the last seven or eight years I've seen a lots of startups with a lot of different approaches and I've seen how IP when done correctly is a positive factor in their approach to being successful one of my recent companies AppDynamics I started with them just four years ago they had a marketing plan business plan customer outreach plan from the beginning and I think just a few months ago there acquired by Cisco for nearly two billion dollars I think so I've seen I've seen it happen and I've seen it fail and hopefully I can provide you some information that shares the best and what not to do so with that and also moving forward this what we'll be talking about today so if you have any questions please just raise your hand we can just discuss as we go so the first thing I'm going to talk about today is kind of intellectual property 101 what some different types of IP are and how they differ from each other and then I'll talk about why and when a start-up might want to consider patent protection it's not for everybody and for a lot of companies that actually make sense not to file for patents Pandora had their their key technology was the algorithm for selecting different songs based on your preferences and they never publicized that it was a trade secret they never patented it because one thing about patents is they're made public either 18 months after you file it or if it's ever issued into a patent so it's not for everybody and we'll discuss why you might want to consider patent if you're a startup then we'll get into the patentability of software this is kind of the nuts and bolts as to what type of software is patentable and what kind of requirements are we can I won't spend a whole lot of time in this but I don't want to put you all to sleep but we will cover some of the basics and then we'll talk about the best practices for obtaining the software patent as well as some of the pitfalls I have learned over the years so and like I said if anybody has any questions feel free to let me know intellectual property this is what I've been doing for the last 17 years intellectual property is defined as a work or an invention or some other creative act by a person that creates some sort of intangible value it can be an idea it could be a name for a product it would just be a an authorship of a work of art intellectual property it's not tangible you can't really hold it the way it's implemented or the results that can be held for example you know a CD with a song or a script or a code or an actual product but it can be assigned and it can be owned just like any other property so let's get into these types of properties so the types we're going to talk about today include obviously patents so a patent is a type of IP that protects the utility or design of an invention trademarks are another type of emotional property and those are typically a name or brand associated with a particular product copyrights are another type of intellectual property and that protects a work of authorship in particular to that particular implementation of that authorship and then there's trade secrets trade secrets are right not you don't well I guess up until recently you don't really apply for a trade secret you just do things internally to identify as a trade secret and maintain put processes in place to keep it a secret a trade secret protects information that's not generally or generally known or reasonably ascertained by a competitor and it provides economic advantage over your competitors by use of that information going into trade figures for his patents we could do a whole nother hour so I just want to touch on it briefly so let's get to the main part of the boiler here patents a patent is a government granted right so if you come up with a great idea or your invention whether it's hardware or software you you won't get a patent unless you apply to the US government for it and its regional so a US patent would cover you in the United States patent from Germany would cover you in Germany and so forth and the way most patents work is in most countries is it allows you to prevent others from making using or selling the invention that you described in the patent so that right to exclude doesn't necessarily allow you to practice the invention and that's kind of a tricky trade-off so let's say your invention is let's say a laptop computer and your laptop computer has a housing display a keyboard and ports so let's say you so your your your patent covers all four of those things a a device for computing and processing code which includes a housing a display a keyboard and ports so if somebody else had a patent for something similar which is just housing a display in the keyboard but didn't have the ports you might not be able to use your invention because based on how their patent was worded because they included a B and C which would be inclusive of products that include a B and C plus other things as opposed to yours covering a B C and D so you could both prevent people from using a product that includes a B C and D but they could also prevent people commuting a product with a b and c so with your patent for a b c and d you could prevent others from doing that but if somebody has a patent on a subset of your invention then you might not be able to practice your own invention yeah so the question was does it make sense for a person or startup to try and obtain a patent that is as narrow as possible so you can prevent your patent as as broad as possible and the answer is yes that would be a patent of most value but in obtaining the patent based on prior art that's out there there's only so much you can do usually so ever that's what everybody's goals usually is to just get the most valuable patent possible which means it's the most narrow patent and we'll get into how to do that a little later so I think that answers question ok a little bit more information about patents to two of the key requirements for obtaining a patent is must be novel and it must be non-obvious so if an inventor is kind of familiar with things in their industry and they think oh this is new nobody's done this 99.9% of time they're right however to get a patent it not must only be novel it must also be non-obvious and so there's a lot of factors and court cases and things that go into non-obviousness but basically the requirement is something like would somebody else is skilled in the arts who would another for example for the people most people in this room are many people but another software engineer who is trying to solve this product would they be would it be


Thanks Rosario your participation is very much appreciated
- Stanton Roling


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