When Patent Protection Begins?

Answer 1

A patent is a legal way of claiming an idea or an invention as your own. If you come up with something, you need to patent it right away so that others cannot steal the idea from you. If you were to create a car that ran on only water, for example, you would need to patent it before you sold it. If you did not, someone else could simply buy your car, take it apart, and then build their own. After that, they could file for a patent. This would actually make it illegal for you to build your own car since they would technically have the rights to it.

The only problem with this whole system is the amount of time that it takes. There are hundreds of thousands of patents. When people file for new ones, the old ones have to be examined to make sure that the new invention is not actually something that has already been invented. There are many steps that have to be taken as a mistake could be incredibly bad for a person's business. Mistakes like this cannot be made, so the patent can take months before it will get through the whole system. You will only get your approval at the very end.

One thing that is nice is that an invention idea patent can protect you even before the patent goes through. This is what has been done to combat the long amount of time that it takes for the process to be completed. You will be able to produce and sell the thing that you have created without any fear of it being stolen from you. Someone else could apply for a similar patent, but they would come after you in terms of their filing date. The people who were looking over your design would see this and award you the patent because you turned in the paperwork first.

As can be seen, patent protection begins before you have even been awarded the patent. If you have invented something, do not start selling it until you make sure that all of the patent-related paperwork is in order. You do not want to accidentally give your idea to someone else, or they could make a lot of money off of it. Getting a patent should be one of the first things that you do when you start designing a new product.