Preface
The Inventor's Guide to Trademarks and Patents is a unique book that provides readers with insights to creating trademarks and inventions. As the book opens, it guides you through some interesting inventions of the past. This book explains in simple, yet detailed terms what defines intellectual property. This book, like no other on the market, then begins to unveil an invention that the reader may discover and wish to pursue. In fact, this book attempts to give away one or more inventions. This book then explains in simple terms how to file your new inventions.
The co-authors have delivered an unprecedented book that explains how and what to consider related to intellectual property development and protection practices. The reason this book is so unique is that it not only explains how to create trademarks and inventions, but it suggests and gives away one or more inventions. This book then closes with instructions on exactly how to file these inventions and discussions of authoritative sources of reference.
What Is the Importance of This Book?
The co-authors have developed this book as a document of interest and advanced learning for a global reading audience. No book in the global market today teaches you how to create an invention, leads your thinking into a new invention, and then explains exactly how to file it. Furthermore, if the idea is not an invention, then it is no doubt some other form of intellectual property, which is also explained in this book.
Proper Legal Advice Is ImportantAll legal advice must be tailored to the specific circumstances of each individual case. It is important to understand that none of the information provided in this book should ever be utilized as a substitute for advice of competent legal counsel. |
This book presents simple exercises in both print and thought that are intended to expand thinking around intellectual property. Aspects of intellectual property are explained in easy-to-understand terms, yet in-depth enough to provide a full basis of understanding. Patents, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, and copyrights are all simply explained, and most important, this books explains how to identify them and properly use them for protection purposes.
The information provided in this book is helpful to readers familiarizing themselves with intellectual property issues that may affect them. What is a trademark versus a service mark? How do I file a copyright? That said, as all legal advice must be tailored to the specific circumstances of each individual case, it is important to understand that nothing provided herein should be used as a substitute for advice of competent legal counsel.
In addition, it is important to understand that intellectual property law varies considerably from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (and even between states in the U.S.). Therefore, some information described in these pages may not be applicable to your jurisdiction. You also should be aware that we (the co-authors) could not promise that everything in this book is complete or up to date, due to the dynamic nature of the content.
All these matters are important to understand as you read this book.
What You Can Expect From This Book
We want to set the stage for what you will find interesting while reading this book. Expect to find a thought-provoking experience throughout the middle chapters of this book. Do not expect that you need to be a Ph.D. or be a college graduate to understand and practice the principals discussed in this book: That would be a mistake. The Inventor's Guide to Trademarks and Patents is written in easy-to-understand language and allows for readers of all ages to be able to learn from the information provided.
In this book, readers are introduced to basic invention principles and several important discussions surrounding intellectual property. Readers will find these discussions interesting, with a passive-progressive evolution of cognitive thinking. Expect to learn specific expertise and skill development in the areas of creating patents and trademarks. One most interesting concept will teach the readers how to create their own invention “spawning” teams. This is a very effective approach to problem solving.
These discussions are delivered in a concise, hard-hitting, and to-the-point fashion. Using this delivery approach, we believe this will help readers more clearly understand the basic principles of patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and copyrights, plus, their respective implementation, utilization, and filing models.
Readers of this book should expect to explore the following:
The basic concepts of inventing: Explaining how the inventor thinks. This book walks you into an example of inventing and discovering other inventions that may relate to the solution thinking prescribed in this book.
How the patent evaluator thinks: The inventor and evaluator protocol is described. Workshop examples are established for practicing this interchange. The end result is strengthening the invention and developing critical skills.
The influence of intellectual property: Exploring the cultural aspects of intellectual property, incentives to create these types of assets, aspects of harvesting intellectual property, and commercialization of these kinds of assets.
The new world commerce and intellectual property: Special treatment is provided to other countries and their respective involvement in the fields of intellectual property.
The most prominent positioning of intellectual property as assets with an associated value: Approaches to asset commercialization, incentives, and building invention teams all contribute to developing large numbers of patents and other types of intellectual property. Managing innovation to a common end point is the focus in the teaming discussions of this book.
How This Book Is Organized
The Inventor's Guide to Trademarks and Patents contains nine chapters, which are organized into interesting discussions across several different dimensions of intellectual property management:
Chapter 1, “Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks—A Look Back,” provides an interesting history of innovative inventions, copyrights, and trademarks. In addition, this chapter discusses early inventions, showing examples of how inventors thought during these periods. This chapter closes with informative discussions.
Chapter 2, “Formulating the Idea,” provides a unique approach to thinking about a new idea. This chapter accounts for the fact that a problem will have a novel solution. Essentially, this chapter guides you through cognitive processes involved in formulating new ideas, based upon problems trying to be solved. This chapter introduces a patent uniqueness and novelty test, which is paramount in any patent. Discussions related to management of innovation are discussed in the closing pages of this chapter.
Chapter 3, “Search Strategies, Techniques, and Search Tools to Validate the Uniqueness of any Invention,” provides simple exercises that will develop critical skills related to searching and researching various topics on the Internet. Discussions of “prior art” are introduced and how to determine if anyone has ever thought about a new idea you might have in mind.
Chapter 4, “Invention Teams,” provides fabulous insights on how to establish and engage productive invention teams out of small numbers of individuals. This is a great chapter for understanding key aspects of teaming, as it reaches back to the days of Thomas Edison and his invention teams. This chapter explores the dynamics of certain members on these types of teams, the roles and responsibilities of members, and important elements of invention mentoring.
Chapter 5, “Invention Evaluation Teams,” provides a robust view of critical skills involved in evaluating the strengths of invention ideas and other intellectual property assets. The underlying premise in this chapter surrounds the ability to understand values in solution ideas and other forms of intellectual property.
Chapter 6, “Defining a Patent: The Problem, Solution, and Novelty,” introduces you to the act of creating a patent. This chapter explores what's involved in defining appropriate problems with solutions that are novel for inventions, while also addressing key aspects of other types of intellectual property. Critical skills for harvesting these types of assets are explored.
Chapter 7, “Mining Intellecutal Property Assets,” builds on the previous chapter and addresses key aspects of filing multiple ideas as bulk submissions.
Chapter 8, “Intellectual Property,” provides insights to definitive discussions on the various types of intellectual property.
Chapter 9, “Property Protection: Copyrights, Trademarks, Trade Secrets, Patents, and Publishing Intellectual Property,” provides an in-depth view on how to file various types of intellectual property. This chapter also identifies authoritative sources to assist in the formalization process of intellectual property.
Appendix 1, “Case Study Patents for Further Research,” contains listing of the example patents used in the prior arts study in this book. This clearly shows how claims are written in patents, and more.
Appendix 2, “Trade Secrets,” explains additional details surrounding the topic of trade secrets.
Appendix 3, “Inventor Resources,” provides an extremely valuable list of resources that any inventor can utilize while engaged in the invention process.