Customer Reviews

Protecting Your Ideas: The Inventor's Guide to Patents

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One of the most complete and up-to-date books for inventors is _Protecting_ by Mrs Bryant, who is a patent agent. After distinguishing patents from copyrights and trade secrets, she outlines a roadmap for inventors and identifies many of the pitfalls likely to be encountered. As a collateral benefit, she also summarizes the process for initiating foreign applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty. The intended audience is predominantly engineers (both regarding personal inventions and those assigned to their employers) with suggestions on documentation and diligence along with expected costs, but patent agents and attorneys can also benefit from the overview on statutory intent and court interpretation. The figures showing the relevant forms are an added benefit. One unintentionally amusing comment was her observation that "many lawyers" do not satisfy the requirements to register before the US Patent & Trademark Office. Actually, only a tiny handful of attorneys qualify to formally prosecute patent applications (although registration is not needed for litigation or licensing, and in fairness the author probably means "intellectual property" lawyers of whom patent attorneys are a subset). Hopefully a revised edition will address publication of patent applications from the American Inventors Protection Act and the impact of _Festo_v._Shoketsu_ on the Doctrine of Equivalents - both developing after the book's publication - as well as correct the assertion that PTO registration is available only from passing the (rather difficult) patent exam - the alternative method is to work as a patent examiner. Otherwise, _Protecting_ presents a valuable and recommended resource to engineers and scientists.

Joy Bryant's book clearly explains the importance of protecting intellectual property. Most inventors, especially independent ones, think they know how to protect their ideas. Joy's book shows us all the important aspects that are often overlooked or misunderstood. She first provides a nice, concise history of the process of granting temporary monopolies to the creators of intellectual property. This helps the reader to better understand the process of obtaining patents. Joy's book is especially helpful in defining the important steps that are necessary prior to filing a patent, such as good recordkeeping and how much can be disclosed about the ideas without ruining the patent process. In addition to providing clear, step-by-step instructions for navigating through the legalities, Joy provides a wealth of practical examples to illustrate the principles. This book is an important work for all entrepreneurs who establish their businesses upon their own ideas.

This book has been extremely helpful to me in learning about the patent process. Each step in obtaining a patent is clearly described and common pitfalls are pointed out so they can be avoided. Each chapter provides concrete examples that summarize the material just covered and presents the information in a way that is easy to understand. As an engineer concerned with protecting IP, I have found this book invaluable.

Too many lay people and even legal professionals have no idea about the differences between patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Joy Bryant's work, in addition to outlining the patent process, provides a clear explanation of the various kinds of intellectual property law in general. This book is a "must" read for general practice attorneys who want to point their clients in the right direction for answers to IP questions. It is also a great tool for patent attorneys to use to educate their clients on the process of obtaining a patent.

Tremendous resource for scientists and other geeks. Succinct read. Answers the FAQs: 'What is a patent?', , 'Who can I turn to for help?', 'Are there special patent libraries for researching my ideas?', 'How do I search the technical/patent literature?', 'What are claims?', 'I can't afford to patent, how can I still protect my idea?'

Like the numerous tips & checklists -- very helpful!

Descriptions of what can be protected and the mechanisms for filing the proper documents is a great help. The book gives lots of examples and is clearly written for anyone wishing to protect their ideas.

This book is absolutely maddening! I hate to say this, but you better throw your money to the trash box. You may give it to me (money) and I'll do the job for you, free of charge!

Your trusted friend, Jimmzkie

This book is absolutely maddening! I hate to say this, but you better throw your money to the trash box. You may give it to me (money) and I'll do the job for you, free of charge!

Your trusted friend, Jimmzkie