Video Transcript
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hey there I’m Gary Schuster welcome to Innovation Cafe today I want to talk with you about a really weird thing that I think you should put in every patent application you file which is you should explain in the body of the patent itself why it’s such a good invention why people might want to license it and how it might be used to improve people’s lives now I know it sounds weird cuz that’s the kind of thing that if you’re using a patent broker for example you would expect them to get on the phone with potential licy and explain it but here’s why you want to include it the patent is going to stand alone as a document once you get through the doors of a big company that might want to buy your license your patent that thing is not going to go with your patent broker from office to office instead it’s the patent that’s going to be passed around maybe with a little bit of a summary of it so if you include language in the patent explaining why people want it what it can do for Humanity and what it can do for the owner that is far more
powerful than just a dry boring recital of the technology now you have to be clear here it does have to enable the technology it has to do everything that a patent application is supposed to do but there is no rule against including descriptions about how it might be used how it might improve people’s lives and I strongly suggest you do it it also helps you avoid a fairly significant problem which is as the inventor of patented technology you can really damage your issued patent by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person so let’s just imagine that I’m sitting down and I’m in a deposition as the inventor and there’s a lawyer sitting across from me and they’re taking testimony and let’s say I’ve got a design patent on the gorilla mug I don’t but let’s say I do they might ask me so tell me the story about
how you came up with it and if I were to say something like well in the environment that I was operating in I mean it was a pretty obvious thing anyone could have come up with it I just I guess I just got lucky I thought of it first wow I have just seriously harmed that patent you can also characterize the claims in a way that’s really not helpful sometimes this happens the prosecution of the patent where you tell the patent examiner yeah I know you rejected me because you think the clean covers X but it doesn’t cover X and then you’re going to be prohibited later from saying you know it does cover X because he expressly disclaimed it you can do that in a conversation too I mean if you’re doing an interview with someone at the Consumer Electronics Show and they’re running video and you say yeah you know the cool thing about this patent is it covers this product and it turns out that this product that you say it covers was invented and in public use prior to the date you filed for your
patent you have probably just invalidated your patent so including marketing language inside of the body of the patent itself takes a lot of the heat off of you as an inventor to try to Market it to try to Puff it up to sell it to get people excited about it because the patent ation itself can do that so that’s my really quick tip include language in the patent that explains why it’s cool and why people want it and with that quick tip this has been Innovation Cafe stay creative because every human is invent your way out of trouble because you can and don’t forget that we’re all human here and more important than anything else we have to care for each other this has been Innovation Cafe I’m Gary Schuster and we’ll catch you next time