Igor Shoiket's Answers

Do I have to file my company trademark separate from the patent of my product?

You must submit a trademark application to start the trademark registration process. Any application for a patent must be submit separately. Each application (trademark and patent) has a separate fee and goes through each own review and approval process. The USPTO will not consider any trademark-registration issues as part of the patent process, or vice versa.

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Changes to the product post filing of a Provisional Application.

You should file a provisional application with the broadest possible description of your invention. Claims in a utility application (to which the provisional application must be converted within 12 months) that are enabled by the original disclosure will have the date of the filing of the provisional application as their priority date. If you have to add new matter to support a different design, claims that are supported by the new matter will have a priority date of the filing of the...

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Can you patent or copyright a recipe?

Recipes that are mere listings of ingredients are not protected by copyright law. However, a literary description, explanation, or illustration that accompanies a recipe may be protected. Recipes are generally patentable subject matter, but I think it may be difficult to demonstrate novelty and nonobviousness. There is a lot of information about patenting recipes on the web.

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My question pertains to patent infringement, specifically LED lighting technology - can I use LED lights in MY product for sale?

If the LED lights are purchased form the patentee or from the patentee's licensee, you shouldn't have a problem. Under the doctrine of patent exhaustion, the first unrestricted sale of a patented item exhausts the patentee's control over that particular item. However, if you are buying the LED lights from a manufacturer who does not have a license to manufacture and sell the items in the U.S., then you might have a problem. The use of the patented item bought from an infringer may subject...

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Can I give away a patented product.

I agree with my collegues that you have the right to sell the items. Make sure you have documentation of patent owner's disavowal of the goods.

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Assignment of patent application made under "hired to invent" doctrine

You can find out the assignment information for issued patents and published applications through the USPTO database at http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/?db=pat. If the application has not yet been published, this information is not available on-line. And there is always a risk that the applicant did not fully disclose his or her obligations, which would presumably be a violation of your contract to have the application assigned to you. Provisional applications are not published,...

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About the ownership of patent.

It would depend on what you mean by "do some lab tests." If you give them a feature of the invention to develop, or a problem related to the invention to solve, and they develop the protocols and/or solve the problem, they may be entitled to be co-inventors. Whether they are co-inventors or not would also depend on what is claimed in the utility application and how the claims are written. On the other hand, if you hire them to carry out protocols that you developed, and they simply run...

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Can I file 2 utility patent applications for the same product but for different uses?

I would recommend filing a single patent application with multiple claims covering diferent aspects of your invention. You can file continuation applications later in the process to cover additional aspects of the invention. You should definitely have a patent strategy in place before filing the first application.

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I have a patent, which I believe was infringed.

If you are asking whether you can sue for infringement of an abandoned application, then the answer is no. You need an issued patent to sue on, although you can collect damages from the date of the publication of the application if you give the accused infringer actual notice of the published application. Selling the invention during prosecution is not a bar to getting a patent. Selling it more than a year before filing for a patent is a bar. Under certain circumstances, it is possible to...

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I have recently come up with a new invention, do I need a lawyer?

You should find and talk to a couple of patent attorneys in your area. As with anything else, you are likely to be disappointed if you don't use a professional.

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