Unpatented but Legally Potent (Photo Courtesy of Randall Rausch) It all started when I was on Facebook, innocently minding my own business. OK, as usual I was actually minding everyone else’s business on Facebook. Sometimes, when Karmen hears me typing furiously in the next room she calls out: “Honey, is someone wrong on the Internet again?” I have a zillion [...]
The Surprises and Secrets of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) Photo Credit: Oleg Volk In the patent world, one of the most important, yet surprisingly overrated, issues is secrecy. Yet while it’s a needless fear for many, it can make sense to protect yourself when you have to trust someone else with your secrets. An NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) is also known as a [...]
Plus, Will Elon Buy a Patent from Me? In my work over the decades, I’ve visited the factories of many clients. The smell of machine oil takes me back to my engineering school shop class where I learned to operate Bridgeports and Hardinges. I even learned how to use a newfangled computer to program a milling machine so I didn’t need to turn the wheels [...]
As we approach the SHOT Show, it’s important to get your legal ducks in a row, to be sure you aren’t losing valuable rights, or weakening the rights you already have. Time is short so action may be urgent, but the action needed may be simpler, faster, and cheaper than you think. Pre-SHOT Patent Advice Preserve your patent rights. The best NDA is a pending patent [...]
The True Cost of Patent Protection, and an Ideal Tool to Make Even Smarter Patent Investment Decisions In response to the latest newsletter, one reader wrote me to ask about when it makes financial sense to invest in a patent: As an aside, an interesting article for a future Bulletproof newsletter might be a discussion of when a patent makes financial sense (and [...]
There are a lot of good reasons why my firearms industry clients and other clients want to do a patent search. Sometimes, they’ll hire me to the do the job, but I’d like to offer a reliable resource for doing it yourself. Some patent searches are too formal for do-it-yourself internet work, even by me. In extreme cases, finding the “smoking gun” patent that wins a [...]
