A provisional patent application is not a patent, and furthermore, never becomes a patent, with the single rare exception noted below. It automatically expires after twelve months following the day of filing and cannot be revived.

It does provide a priority date for concurrent later-filed non-provisional applications for the content that is in the provisional. This means that references that could defeat the later-filed application as to the matter in the provisional (but which could not defeat the provisional filing date) will now not be utilized to defeat the later-filed application. Further, it does not subtract from the twenty year term of the later-filed application unless it is truly converted as discussed below.

Are you afraid of what it will cost you to obtain a patent? If you are an independent inventor, you might be. Large corporations may be able to shell out thousands of dollars without flinching, but when the money comes from a single income it’s a different story.

Chemical and pharmaceutical companies protect their investment in research and development and the future of the companies by securing patents on their inventions. Success or failure of the company often depends on the strength of the patent or in its ability to resist competition.

Recently, the United States Patent and Trademark Office proposed changes to the way patents will be processed with a view to reduce patent Examiner’s work load. These changes could drastically limit the company’s ability to secure strong patents. Under the current practice, if the company is not happy with the Examiner’s refusal to grant a patent, the company can file one, two, or more continuation patent applications so that additional exchanges can take place between the applicant and the Examiner.

Even the benefit of increased R&D because the disease also affects developed countries may not accrue to the people in developing countries because some strains of HIV/ AIDS in Africa are different from those on developed countries and as the developing countries are not worth investing in, there may still not be access.

If you’ve wondered why you need a patent, this section will help you understand that.

The purpose of a patent is to protect the intellectual property of the inventor. Patents prohibit anyone other than the patent holder from making or selling the patented item (or using the business method, or planting the new plant, in the case of those patent types) without the permission of the patent holder. Some patent seekers intend to manufacture and sell the patented item themselves, while others intend to license the patent to others – in effect, selling the right to produce the invention while retaining ownership of the idea for a period of time.

Patents are most comprehensive and well documented technological and competitive information source. The most important is that it freely accessible through internet. Studies of technological change constitute a field of growing importance and sophistication. Just as it does in scientific papers, citation plays an important role in the patents field. The inventor uses it to indicate the stage of technology previously reached, upon which his invention improves. However, a patent examiner may find patents that could counter-indicate granting of a patent and ‘oppose’ the application. These citations are usually included in databases under ‘Referenced Patents ‘or ‘Referenced Literature’.

A patent is a right granted to an individual or group (such as a company) which permits the grantee the knack to avoid others from making, using, or selling the invention, for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or composition of matter (substance) (known as an invention) which is new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable.

Patents by their techno-legal nature are written in a specific format, thus enabling it difficult to read and understand by a lay man. The focus of this paper is to provide very basic information of a patent document, so that a lay man can easily understand a patent.

Non-patent literature search is of great importance in the IP domain. Patentability search of any new invention is very crucial and can be achieved by both patent s and non-patent literature search. As far as, my knowledge the patents database is only domain set which is highly organized and easy to access either through free databases or commercial databases. But, the non-patent information such as journals, research publication and disclosures, thesis, etc. are scattered all over the web. There are few databases and vendors which have a good collection of this information and have tried to organize them in easy to access manner. But there are still big whit spaces for further improvements.

India deposited its instrument of accession to the PCT and on 7th December 1998 thus became a member of the PCT, as the 98th Contracting State of PCT. Furthermore, nationals and residents of India are entitled to file international applications for patents under PCT at Receiving Office at Patent Office at Delhi.

Principal Objectives of the PCT

Everybody is doing the patent search by his own approach. What is the best way to carryout patent search? Is it key word search or classification code search? People prefer mainly keywords for effective searching. Some people use classification codes also along with keywords for more precise patent search. For a keyword based patent search the selection of keyword is tough task. The patents are techno-legal documents and good patent attorneys draft patents using technical jargons to beguile competitors.