To have an invention registered you have to prove in most jurisdiction that:

• Your invention works and can be categorized into a predefined category (chemical compound, process, etc.)
• Your invention has not been described before
• Your invention cannot be easily be deduced from other work (it is not an obvious improvement).

You must check that your work has not been described in a patent or published work (scientific paper, journal submission, book, etc.). Doing this is costly and I do not know of any region that may do so for free.

What is important to take into account is that a patent is a means to disseminate technical knowledge in exchange for a limited right of exclusion from reproduction for commercial purposes. That means that it is a tool mostly for commercialization and you must evaluate the market potential before engaging in the costly process of obtaining a patent. That being said the place to obtain a patent will depend on where is your market geographically located. That is where your effort should be directed. Most big markets such as technology, Pharma and similar usually invest on what is known as the patent triangle (EU, US, Japan). Markets such as China are big but you must search for agents who are knowledgeable in this market to avoid pitfalls.

Note: this advise should be checked by your patent legal counsel.

Thanks for such information dear.

Excellent work, Arturo. Can sign it on the spot.

Just a comment on costs. FILING a patent is not really expensive, e.g. the filing fee for the US Provisional Application is, if I remember well, anything like USD 50. However, if you use patent attorney to prepare the filing their fees might be much higher, of the order of 10 to 20 kUSD in case of the US lawyers and US Provisional. The costs could be much lower in other jurisdictions, but there is no place for it to be cheap except if your institution has an in-house patent lawyer.

The attorney costs are just the beginning, the fees for maintaining a patent in the three most important jurisdiction (US, EU, JP), can easily climb up to 100 to 200 kUSD over the 20 year patent period.

As for the patentability search, you can and should do a basic search by yourself, by searching publicly available databases and taping into your experience in the field. This preliminary internal examination needs not to be very thorough, in particular if you plan to file locally and your institution has a patent counsel to write and file the application for you. It is because the first steps (do a limited search, prepare the application, and file) are not very expensive, so you can afford filing an application that happens to fail later in the process.

The patent and trademark office would then perform their quite comprehensive search and let you know about any issues with patentability. It is quite normal the PTO finds issues precluding the granting of a patent.

Once the application gets published, anyone can comment on it and raise objections in terms of novelty and inventive step, thus the PTO and the public do most of the patentability search for you at a relatively modest fee.

Last, but no least. When patenting, you need to consider you might need (a lot of money) to defend your patent if someone big decides to infringe it. If you do not have the money or you are not selling your invention to someone with deep pockets, you'd better just publish it.

Thanks Dr Michel for notes. Its really cheap if it will cost only 50 dollars and no need for lawyer.

Thanks Dr Michel for notes. Its really cheap if it will cost only 50 dollars and no need for a lawyer.

Salwan, just get me right. It is the filing costs. The other cost will follow as the application goes through the process, up to hundreds of thousands dollars. Obviously, you need someone knowledgeable in the field to write the application. Most universities have their internal patent lawyers, so the costs TO YOU will be null.

Last but not least, if you are a student or a faculty member of the university, your invention belongs not to you but to the university.

Salwan, just get me right. The USD 50 is the fee you pay for the filing, it means the fee for the PTO to accept your APPLICATION. The other cost will follow as the application goes through the process, up to hundreds of thousands dollars. Obviously, you need someone knowledgeable in the field to write the application. Most universities have their internal patent lawyers, so the costs TO YOU will be nill.

Last but not least, if you are a student or a faculty member of the university, your invention belongs not to you but to the university.

Yes thanks its quite useful information lighting us to start the first step correctly.

Yes thanks its quite useful information lighting us to start the first step correctly.

Just to add to Michal's point on student or faculty. Do read the IP policy of your institution. In most IP policies it states that the University has a claim if you do rely on substantial use of institutions resources. If you want to claim your ideas yours:

• The inventive step must be yours
• must not use substantial resources from the institution

Thesis that do fall outside of this category is where you propose your idea and there is no substantive input from your professors. Thesis that are derivative works based on collaborative projects tend to fall under the institutions policy.

With regards to professors, the same principle applies, but if you keep your research separate from your work there should be no problem ( I did get two filings outside of my institution during my time there and filed two with the institution. What I did is kept them apart on different topics and did no work in the institution on those topics. I also kept the institution appraised of my personal research as well as my institutional work).

In any case do consult with the tech transfer office (or your institutions equivalent) and do so in writing to have records of your due diligence.

Thank you Arturo its one of the master students work that I am supervising on. I fully poposed the plan and followed him to the end. Is it ok to share the patent?

Thank you Arturo its one of the master students work that I am supervising on. I fully poposed the plan and followed him to the end. Is it ok to share the patent?

Salwan,

The point to remember in a patent is that you have to include any person who has contributed to an inventions claim. if the claim is a device that "uses a linear motion to tighten a screw" and the invention claims the linear motion instead of circular motion and the professor helped in deriving the mechanism, then he has a right to the invention. If he just does:

• grammatical corrections
• formatting of the thesis
• shows shortcoming of your research

then he has no claim of an inventive step(showing that something is a problem is not the same as solving it). On the contrary, if he offers suggestions on how to improve the work which is substantive, then care must be taken on not claiming that as yours, since this can invalidate the patent.

If he did the contribution with substantial use of resources, then the institution will also have a claim to the patent and it is better to channel it through the University. If the University is not interested, you can also ask for them to relinquish the right and pursue it on your own ( be sure to get it on writing).

Yes very clear dear thanks.

Patents are never free. If you are able to write your own patent application, you must still pay fees to the government patent office for filing, searching, publishing, examining, and issuing the patent. Usually, the most expensive part of getting a patent is the cost of having a patent attorney or patent agent prepare the application, including the drawings. If you choose to file for protection in multiple jurisdictions, you will also incur the costs of obtaining translations.

Thanks Mark for illustration .

The purpose of applying and pursuing the grant is to commercialize it by licensing it with a royalty payment/sell it. If you are convinced of the novelty and inventiveness of the idea then there is no alternative but to go far a patent. The best is WIPO (PCT-International route). It doesn’t cost dear at WIPO and your idea is protected worldwide to start with. I don’t know about KSA but in India it is pre-requisite to apply at Indian PO first. You can choose to file at USPTO / EUPTO / JPO at ease after exploring avenues to commercialize. A provisional patent application at USPTO costs much less as explained by Michal Svoboda and drafted by an amateur individual in US that costs $100. But at the end of 11 months 29 days you have to file complete patent which again costs a fortune. As said WIPO is best route and it gives you time to think and take action. You can go through updates of my project.

I am pleased to see informative answer Dr. Ali shiaka , i thank you so much.

Correction: Within 11 months 29 days. Please see videos on the subject on the popular video site.