[deadlykitten]

hello, a few months ago, i was searching for alternatives, so to add a bar puller on a full turret

and i found attached patent about a common bar puller ? i guess such things cost, i mean the documentation, registration, etc, and the cost is big compared to crafting the puller, so why would someone bother to create a patent for such a common thing ?

also, a few years ago, i saw a patent about some er collet chucks with rectangular shank ... anybody can craft those

what's the catch ? so much bureaucracy for what ?

women go shopping, men go patenting ?

patents require a bit of formality, time ... why ? kindly

[awerby]

There may have been some small improvement on prior art in the patents you noticed. Usually there has to be something novel about a patented item, and only the novel elements will be protected by the patent. The patent documents will attempt to describe any relevant prior art, and then make claims for the new features. These will be the enforceable elements of the new patent. But I don't think Antarctica is a signatory to any patent conventions - you can probably make anything you want there, as long as you don't try to export it.....

[Jim Dawson]

There may have been some small improvement on prior art in the patents you noticed. Usually there has to be something novel about a patented item, and only the novel elements will be protected by the patent. The patent documents will attempt to describe any relevant prior art, and then make claims for the new features. These will be the enforceable elements of the new patent. But I don't think Antarctica is a signatory to any patent conventions - you can probably make anything you want there, as long as you don't try to export it.....

[mactec54]

hello, a few months ago, i was searching for alternatives, so to add a bar puller on a full turret

and i found attached patent about a common bar puller ? i guess such things cost, i mean the documentation, registration, etc, and the cost is big compared to crafting the puller, so why would someone bother to create a patent for such a common thing ?

also, a few years ago, i saw a patent about some er collet chucks with rectangular shank ... anybody can craft those

what's the catch ? so much bureaucracy for what ?

women go shopping, men go patenting ?

patents require a bit of formality, time ... why ? kindly

There are many different bar pullers for a turret to use, I'm sure most have a patent on them, if you have a better idea of how to do it then fil a patent on it also but I doubt that you would get a patent unless you have something very different

You can copy someone's patent, in hopes of doing it different but read very carefully as you will find most angles are covered in there patent,especially if the patent has been done right,don't try to sell it, and don't make it known that you are coping a patent, or they will come after you if there is a patent in force

It's very easy to copy someone else's work and say it was so simple that you could do it, but you where not the first to file is what counts no matter how simple it may seem

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
big corporations have intellectual property lawyers reviewing patent apllications all the time. If they see something they
like they alert their company and start to make the thing concerned. Its up to the patent holder to sue the company
infringing the patent and that costs thousands.

A big corporation can throw money at law suites that would break you or I.

Then the Chinese and the Russians don't care....they just copy whatever and you would have to try to stop them in
a Chinese or Russian court.......good luck with that!

In New Zealand a patent application can cost about $10,000. You would want probably five applications, NZ, Austrailia, UK, Canada and US,
so about $50,000. A worldwide patent could cost up to $100,000.

Intellectual Property is a whole industry. In my home city there is a well known (locally) and respected intellectual property law firm who deal
with intellectual property only and have a staff of dozens of people. Most of them aren't lawyers either, as in admitted to the bar and all that, they are
engineers and technicians who have gotten really crafty. Its an expensive place to visit!

Craig

[awerby]

Craig is correct about the initial cost of pursuing a patent, but he doesn't mention the hefty fees that many nations charge to keep your place in line. After your provisional patent is registered, you need to keep paying every year just to keep them from dumping it in the trash. And of course, the cost of defending it, should it come to that, can be astronomical. Here's an article about the recent Apple-Samsung battle over cellphone patents:https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/27/tec...ent/index.html - of course, they were able to afford the "hundreds of millions" in legal fees - you have to ask yourself if you're really ready to play in that league.

[hanermo]

Patents are technically specific to the region - and must be enforced to remain valid.
So a patent holder must take action if they see something that infringes their patent.

A real patent protection will need to be in all oecd countries, plus others.
This will cost about 500.000$, to start.

About the same in ongoing yearly expenses, for lawyers to make cease-desist cases to those infringing on the patents.
If you actually want to have a patent aka defend your patent.

Anyone can get a patent for a few thousand -- but the e.g. US patent is worthless in the EU, and anyone can then make such bits until the patent holder applies for a patent, gets it, and then sues.
A US suit on a US patent is pretty much worthless elsewhere.

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
patent law is quite old and clunky. My information is now quite dated, as evidenced by hanermo's post.

The costs of applying, maintaining and defending a patent make such protections suitable for big well healed organisations.
Private individuals get crushed by organisations who plow you under in legal fees......and then come back with a cheap and chintzy
'licence deal' in effect stealing your invention.

There are other ways to protect yourself, trade mark protection is one. Copyright is another.

Yet another is not to publish anything at all, or publish in a manner that will not be seen by the world at large. You make your device
flat stick hoping to make money. If someone copies it you just have to hope yours is better than theirs. If they try and stop you
from making your device you have to claim 'known prior art' and produce examples of the device made prior to the competing application
OR produce the published description of the device in the 'Back of Beyond Church Newsletter' or other publication. Known prior art cannot
be protected by patent.

One of my University professors (from many years ago) had an invention of very significant commercial value. It nearly broke him, mortgaged
his home, the works, to patent it and defend it three times in the US. He eventually managed to get the offending company to give him a decent licence deal.
The company then had a vested interest in protecting the patent and they assumed the cost of defending it thereafter.

As has been posted, if you copy a patented device or invention but keep it quiet you'll probably get away with it, the patent holder may well never know
or may decide its not worth the legal fees to sue. If however you start producing it for sale then you put yourself at risk of suite. The other
possibility is to licence it from the patent holder.

Bosch, the automotive electrical/electronic giant has a long history of licencing to other manufacturers. You may not realize that the new Nippon Denso diesel
injector pump you have just bought and fitted into your truck was in fact invented by Bosch and a little of the cost of the new pump will find its way back to Bosch
in the form of licence fees.

All in all protecting an invention as a private individual or small company is a difficult proposition.

Myself and a friend had a device (an electrostatic precipitator) that we thought deserved patent protection. We were wrong on several counts, firstly electrostatic
precipitation is a well, known and widely published technique, therefore it was only our specific and particular advances on our devices which could be patented.
Such specific and particular advances are easy for competing manufacturers to attack. Secondly if we were to proceed it would require a worldwide patent to be
effective which was hopelessy beyond our means.

Craig

[deadlykitten]

hello, thank you for your replies

i have no experience with patents, nor an intention to patent something

yup, there are some players, going to protect as much as possible their products, but i did not know that the details are so fine

there are big games, but when i opened this thread, i did because some patents, or some persons that said that they patent something, seemed a bit weird to me, or hopeless ?! maybe i was wrong ...

when i opened the patent from post 1, i did it out if curiosity, and it was like so many pages for a piece of plastic ? nobody will use it, and it was from 2015, thus pretty recent but after i read your replies, i realized that someone may actually craft that item, and maybe it will have a competitive price, because it is not complicated, and there will be clients ...

i guess that in some regions, people are patenting more stuff compared to other regions, and when a lot of people try to patent something, is like an enviroment where "some-kind" of competition exist, so there is room for all types of patents, some nice, others a bit questionable

i have seen that patent a few months ago, but a recent thing made me open this thread; a friend of mine sent me a video about quoting, and i looked over it because he sent it to me, not because i was looking for quoting tips, but however .... as the video starts, i said that this guy has to be from america, and in one of the video comments is written that " its because we have been sold out by our leaders" ... so that comment, and other things, made me wonder if in some places is a lot of tension inside the cnc shops, or arround cnc machining in general, and if this tension will lead to more people, tring to patent more stuff ? and if this is true, then this tension has good effects, or overall, is a harsh enviroment ?

video link is below; kindly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3KUxtPGb2g

[warrenb]

For a demonstration of how absurd the patent system is the "combover" is patented. In my experience patents are not worth it for the small shop. Unless you have bigger lawyers and more money some patent troll will slam a patent on something you invented and take it anyway. Just be the first and the best.

[joeavaerage]

Hi,

Just be the first and the best

Yep, that's my read too.

I was told a story that a large US company had a whole bunch of guys in its legal department whose job it was to 'break' patents either by inventing
a workaround that circumvented the articles of patent OR flood the patent holder with suites to exhaust his ability to defend it.

If, as a lawyer in the department, if you failed to 'break' the patent or the patent holder you were sacked and the lawyer who successfully defended the challenge
was hired instead.

Pretty damned cutthroat.

Craig

[mactec54]

Hi,



Yep, that's my read too.

I was told a story that a large US company had a whole bunch of guys in its legal department whose job it was to 'break' patents either by inventing
a workaround that circumvented the articles of patent OR flood the patent holder with suites to exhaust his ability to defend it.

If, as a lawyer in the department, if you failed to 'break' the patent or the patent holder you were sacked and the lawyer who successfully defended the challenge
was hired instead.

Pretty damned cutthroat.

Craig

I would not believe that story, it does not work at all like that and the legal system would not allow that to take place, nobody has to defend anything, if you are first to file and you do end up filling a complete patent then nobody can take that away from you, people can copy and make your design different but serve the same purpose if you have a poor patent attorney and did not cover all possible design changes, then you could loose it's market value, but you will always be the one that was first to file

They can only file against you if they have the same tracts in there patent, and that would of had to of been filed before your filing date, so don't believe stories like this, as this does not happen

If anyone has something with some market value and is very different from anything else out there they should file a Patent copy write or what ever category it falls into, it's not that difficult to do and does not have to be expensive

[mactec54]

For a demonstration of how absurd the patent system is the "combover" is patented. In my experience patents are not worth it for the small shop. Unless you have bigger lawyers and more money some patent troll will slam a patent on something you invented and take it anyway. Just be the first and the best.

Not true it does not work like that, as I said before if you are first to file in what ever category and then get a full patent approved then nobody can take that away from you

Patent trolls only go after expired patents or a non payment by the owner of the patent, that they think they can revive and may be make a buck from

[deadlykitten]

what is a combover ?

and that would of had to of been filed before

my god, this is hi-tech english

[mactec54]

what is a combover ?



my god, this is hi-tech english

Just Google it, nothing high tech

[deadlykitten]

i tried, but it seems to be a real name, thus google shows persons

if i try cambover + patent, i find 4 images and some irelevant stuff ...

[mactec54]

i tried, but it seems to be a real name, thus google shows persons

if i try cambover + patent, i find 4 images and some irelevant stuff ...

This is what it means, whether the OP has it as something else

A comb over or combover is a hairstyle worn by bald or balding men in which the hair is grown long and combed over the bald area to minimize the appearance of baldness

This patent has long expired

Combover Patent. The Triple-Layered Comb-Over™ was issued a patent by the United States Patent Office on May 10, 1977. While the Smith family never made a penny off their invention, the combover did eventually win an Ig Nobel Award, which: honors achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think

Patent US4022227A - Method of concealing partial baldness

[joeavaerage]

Hi,

They can only file against you if they have the same tracts in there patent, and that would of had to of been filed before your filing date, so don't believe stories like this, as this does not happen

They CAN and DO file against individual articles of patent, usually claiming that they are 'known art', if you don't defend the claim them the patent office can throw out your patent
application. This HAS happened, it is exactly what happened to my University Professor years ago.

Craig

[mactec54]

Hi,


They CAN and DO file against individual articles of patent, usually claiming that they are 'known art', if you don't defend the claim them the patent office can throw out your patent
application. This HAS happened, it is exactly what happened to my University Professor years ago.

Craig

If there is already known art that relates to the same as what you are trying to apply a patent too, then yes you should of done the patent search on prior art, which is what costs the money, if there is prior art then yes you have no show of retaining a Patent if you have it already, so what you are saying is a lot of Bs because he should not of had the Patent to start with, Remember these two things Prior Art and First to File this is not made up stuff it is real if this is not the case then you can't clam it as yours

How do I know this stuff because my wife is a degreed Patent attorney

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
there were two articles of patent that the opposing company sought to have ruled as known art and therefore break the patent application.

This resulted in two separate cases in US courts. In both instances the court found that the articles were indeed novel and not known art at all,
ie the patent application was good. Cost about $20,000 to defend both cases. The company were quite happy to grind the application holder down.
He was not dissuaded. Eventually the same company agreed to licence terms.

Craig