Final Thoughts

• Author: Donald S. Rimai
• Profession: Recently retired from Eastman Kodak where he worked as a researcher and intellectual property manager in digital printing and adhesion science
• Pages: 245-253

245

In Case of a Tight Deadline: Provisional Patent

Applications

You have seen by this time that building a valuable patent portfolio that

creates substantial fences around your intellectual property and impedes

others from encroaching into your market space can be, unfortunately, a

long and expensive process.

Long is oen the operative word. You have to identify the inventions

for which you wish to le patent applications, dra proposed claims

and do a prior art search on those claims before you start writing your

applications. You will obviously have to identify the distinct and separate

inventions, as each invention will need its own application. at means

a lot of time has to go into proposing those claims and conducting the

appropriate prior art searches. You may have to revise your claims, based

on your analysis of the search results. Once this is done, you can start

writing the applications.

But, how do you proceed should you not have sucient time for all

the steps necessary to implement your patent strategy? Such short time

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Final oughts