What is a design patent (called “industrial design” in Mexico)? A design patent protects “how it looks” rather than “how it works”. If your product attracts clients or buyers based on how it looks you should consider filing an industrial design patent. In some inventions both design and utility are important; in such cases you … Read more
There are many requirements that an invention must fulfill in order to be granted a patent. The invention must be novel, non-obvious, and useful. Note that “proven to work” is not on the list of requirements. You don’t necessarily have to build a prototype to get a patent. A great example is US Patent 10,144,532 … Read more
Microsoft was recently awarded US Patent 10735211 for a “Meeting Insight Computing System” that would monitor participants body language and facial expressions in order to assign meetings a “quality score.” Microsoft says the factors to be monitored could include air temperature, air composition, brightness, ambient noise level, room occupancy (e.g., expressed as a binary value or an … Read more
You just cannot ignore the importance of Patent Drawings for Low-Tech Products. Examples from the past proves that even a low-tech product can be worth for getting patented. In the popular imagination patents are most closely associated with high tech. And there are, of course, a lot of patents in high-tech, and a lot of … Read more