Patents Fast Track

Article Summary

Fast Track Patents, By Teska Kirk

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The article I read for this assignment was written by Teska Kirk. The article is titled as "Fast Track Patents". This article discusses the fast track programs of the US patent and Trademark Office to speed up the patent application process.

As because we were discussing about the Intellectual property in this chapter, patent application drew my attention so I decided to write about this topic. According to our book, "A patent is a grant of property issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to an inventor so that it permits its owner to exclude the public from making, using, or selling a protected invention, and it allows legal action against the violators". However in this article the author mentions that an inventor has to go through a lot like meetings with management, company forms to fill out, meetings with patent attorneys, reviewing, editing and finally filling an application for patent. The author here tries to explain that after going through all the necessary paper work and processes all that inventor has to do is wait, wait and wait for the US Patent and Trademark Office examiner of your patent application. It may take the officer of your patent application about two years or so and at the end your results comes out as rejected. And again going through the patent attorney through legal arguments to convince the patent examiner that they were wrong on their analysis, this may take another year or two before you finally receive your patent. It's completely understandable that it's an important thing and may take time for the examiner to go through several process of checking the previous patents and records, however author asks that there must be an option to speed up this process a little. He further suggest that there are now several programs designed to speed up the patent pending process but at the same time author also suggest that these processes might just end up as quicker way to getting rejected from the patent officer. As the Patent office stated that it is their goal to complete examination of an application within 12 months, which still doesn't means that you will receive your patent during that duration and most of the time it's rejected for several reasons. Author suggests other ways to acquire the patents faster like using accelerated programs, track I, and Make Special, however all these processes require additional $4800(half for the small businesses) on top of the patent fees. Unless you have medical problems, you are in certain old age, or if you are doing some sort of green technology innovation, or innovation is related to homeland security issues, you have less chance to be considered in that 'Make Special' petition of patent filing. In most cases attorney