Texas Patents Legal Questions

If you are buying the patented products from lawful manufacturers (the patent owner or licensee), then there is a legal doctrine called "patent exhaustion" that applies.  This doctrine holds that, once a patent owner has sold a patented product for the first time, they no longer have control over it: the buyer can use, sell, license or destroy the product as they wish. If you have decisions that turn on this question, I recommend you retain an intellectual property law attorney for a brief consultation and a professional opinion on which you can rely. Anthony Claiborne Claiborne Patent Law Services 425-533-6132... Read More

A linking claim could avoid continued restriction or perhaps consolidate a lot of your claims.  However, to link your claims, the linking claim might be too broad to distinguish patentably over the prior art.  You might want to conduct a pretty thorough preliminary prior art search that devotes a fair amount of attention to all the classes you mentioned.  If you do go ahead with a linking claim, take care to negotiate the potential hurdle of satisfying the written description requirement.  If your conclusion is that a satisfactory linking claim cannot be written, elect the group that seems to offer the greatest promise of patentability and greatest commercial potential.  In that case, you can pursue any non-elected group in a divisional patent application that must be filed during the pendency of your current patent application.... Read More

I just did an audiocast that will answer all of these questions.  I am engineer with a degree in biomedical engineering and computer science & I'm a patent attorney. Here's a link to the audiocast.  I'm sure it'll help.  If you want to take the next step towards retaining an attorney, here's a link with the options we have. -Paul Protect it! IP Contact info      ... Read More

I have never seen anyone attempt to get patent protection based on this type of idea. My expectation is that it would not be patentable. Even a combination of two elements that seem completely unrelated (like livestock and baseball gloves) would be obvious and, thus, not patentable, in my opinion, absent some other special synergy that is not evident from the question. Good luck, Todd... Read More

It would be safer to get a non-disclosure signed.  Keep in mind as well that US patent laws changed significantly with the America Invents Act.  It used to be beneficial for the invention priority date to keep dated records showing time of invention. Now, the US is a first-to-file jurisdiction. If you came up with the idea six months ago and I came up with it yesterday, but I file a patent application tomorrow and you file in another month, I am entitled to the patent rights and you are not. If you are concerned about getting a patent, I would do what you need to do to get a provisional patent application filed as soon as the machine concept is complete enough to put something on file. Having a provisional application on file is safer than an executed non-disclosure for patent right purposes.... Read More

I think you have an error in your question. The company likely has a registered trademark in the phrase, not a copyright. The Copyright Office has a very low threshold requirement of creativity to get a copyright issued, but I'm not aware that they've ever awarded a copyright on a three word phrase. Do you have to change your slogan? You are not 'required' to change your slogan until a court issues an injunction requiring you to change your slogan. Until that time you can defend your right to use your slogan. However, getting that injunction will be expensive for the trademark owner and also for you, prospectively a five-figure legal bill for each of you. To get the injunction, the trademark owner will need to show the court that consumers are likely to be confused by the slogan into believing your company is related to their company. If they can show a likelihood of confusion, they could get the injunction and collect monetary damages from you. What you really need to ask is, "is the slogan worth it?" Do you really get enough business from the slogan that it is worth the hassle and the risk? Relatively few of these cases every reach a verdict because the more practical decision is to modify the slogan and avoid the expense. Good luck... Read More

This question is too time intensive to get a comprehensive answer for free. It should take more than 10 hours to determine what is patented, whether 'kimkaps' is infringing, and how you could make comparable caps while avoiding infringement. "What are they expressly patenting?" I haven't looked at the patent, but I would suggest starting by looking at claim 1 in the patent. That claim lays out what the Patent Office agreed the applicant had invented, which no one else may practice. To avoid infringing this claim, you need to omit something from your product that is required by this claim. I would also consider going to www.uspto.gov and searching on the PAIR system in the patent section for the prosecution history of this patent. Within the prosecution history is a file wrapper that includes all of the documents that led to this patent being issued, saved in pdf form. In there, if you find the Notice of Allowance, you may find that the US Patent Examiner that allowed the patent to issue has described what he found novel about the invention. Avoiding this novelty may allow you to avoid infringing the patent. If you are not sure if you will infringe by making thes caps, your best bet is to steer clear.... Read More

You need to provide more information than you have; for example, what fees could you not afford to pay? Was it only the government issue fee or other government fees and/or fees charge by "the company?" From your comments, I assume that you worked through an invention marketing; do you have any basis for believing that the company misused the information provided as opposed to another party becoming aware of it from your published patent application? If you now have the money to pay all of the government fees that were due and all fees for reviving the application, it may be possible for you to do so, but it is not clear from the information provided how much those fees would be and whether it would be possible to revive the application.... Read More

The best thing for you to do is to file what is call a provisional patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office. It is a low cost filing that need not be in a particular format and you can find all the information you need about it on the uspto.gov/patents/resources/types/provapp.jsp web page.  Separately, I caution you about using an invention company without first finding out their success rate, for example, how many of their clients have obtained more as a result of the company's services than they paid the company in fees, and without first checking to insure that it is not one of the invention companies that legal action has been taken against by client, a state's attorney general or the USPTO.... Read More

You cannot use anyone's trademarks/logos without their permission. Facebook and Google have conditions under which you can use their icons. You can find Facebook's guidelines at http://www.facebook.com/brandpermissions/faq.php and Google's guidelines at http://www.google.com/permissions/guidelines.html. Go check the policy of who owns the Angry Birds for their guidelines. Many large companies are very protective of their trademarks so don't assume that your use in a high school yearbook is necessarily ok.... Read More

You question is a bit unclear, but I will do my best to provide an answer. As long as your logo, service mark or trademark are not infringing another's rights, you should be able to use you logo on any products or services your company provides. The rights you have are in the "look" of the logo (or design) and the specific words that are tied to your company. A logo, trademark or service mark does not protect ideas or the specific mechanics of products. For example, if you design a new type of transmission and create a logo calling the transmission "Super Transmission," you will be able to prevent others from calling their transmissions "Super Transmission" but not prevent them from creating transmissions on their own that are called something else.... Read More