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| Leeds Inventors Group |
A patent is granted for inventions that are new and involve an inventive step. An invention may be new to you and to everyone else you know but if someone somewhere in the world dreamed it up before you, you don't get your patent. If by some chance you do get a patent and your invention turns out not to have been new you stand to lose your patent despite the fortune you may have paid in professional, official and renewal fees to get it. So searching should be important to every inventor.
Searching should also be important to anyone who may be accused of infringing the patent. If he or she finds that the invention has been anticipated or that it was obvious then the patent would be invalid. And if the patent is invalid there is nothing to infringe.
Searching for patents is a dark art practised by patent agents, librarians examiners and others at midnight on moonless nights in Armley cemetery with their familiar (an immortal cat called Ginger who is himself something of an inventor) after dancing anti-clockwise round a computer in a pentagon.
However, two of them have broken ranks. Ged and Stef will share their secrets with you at a Patent Searching Workshop at 18:00 this evening at Leeds Central Library. There are still one or two places left so if you want to find out about this topic then now's your chance. You can register for the event through Eventbrite and I hope that at least some of my instructing solicitors will do just that.
Sheffield Inventors Group has already had its July meeting - a fascinating talk by Pat Ross of Creative Genie on identifying your USP. Another dark art perhaps. You can find my write-up at "Identifying your USP - the Overlap between Design and Invention" 9 July 2013 Inventors Club
