patents

[girliegirl]

My family has a manufacturing plant so I have been trying to come up with a muse that I can have things manufactured there. My brother who runs the business says they have invented a few products for just one or 2 customers that he feels would be very marketable. He does not have to time to research it or create a muse, so he would allow me to do it. My first question is one part they created was taken from a product a customer already had and they asked our company to come up with a similar componet. My brother said he has no idea if there is a patent on the product they kind of copied, how would you research that? ALso my brother asked about liability. This part is a piece that makes a machine work. What if someone got hurt running the machine? Could the company say it was because of this part that the machine malfunctioned and sue us?

[Marcie]

Hi - Google has a (beta) patent search at http://www.google.com/patents - you can also search on the USPTO site: http://www.uspto.gov/ but with some insider information I think that Google's search is more accurate/easier to use.

Truth is, this is very complicated waters. The Patent Office (USPTO) can grant a patent but it still could be shot down later of challenged in court. I think if I am reading your post correctly, if you sold an item and you were worried about liability, you could require your customers to sign an indemnification agreement (or the like) but still, when someone sues you, someone sues you, period. There truly is no protection from the actual lawsuit, only covering your bases before it happens.

For the record, I am not a lawyer but have specific experience in this area from my day job (hey it's not always a bad thing to work a day job ;)) - so please don't sue me for my advice :)

And furthermore, liability insurance is something everyone should consider, more expensive with the scenario we are talking about here and things like consumables, which is one of the reasons Tim does not reccommend consumables...FWIW!

[lindyhopper]

I was interested in acquiring a patent. I read a whole book on patent law, and came to some intresting conclusions.
A patent doesn't protect your idea from being stolen. All a patent does is give you the right to sue someone in a civil action.
Your rock solid patent can be circumvented with reference to "prior art" or a person can say that your patent is obvious to any "practitioner in the field."
And most importantly, if you recieve a lawsuit challenging your patent, do you have the funding to win the battle?

The case against a patent
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf