Patrick M. O'Leary, MBA, BSEEMy former company, MatchMaker.com in 1990 addressed just about every area of the Internet Community and Social Networking / Media space.
Today I have the Intellectual property of the 1990 version of MatchMaker.com installed and running for the purposes of invalidating Intellectual Property Patent Claims. This Prior Art will invalidate just about any Internet Social Networking / Community / Dating Patent Claim.
This is a picture of the New York MatchMaker.com in 1992.
The girl in the picture has graduated college with a Doctorate in Physical Therapy.
This is a screen shot of the text-based MatchMaker BBS in 1991.
Overview: Internet Prior Arts - Why a Patent Validity Search Is Important.
What are internet prior arts? You may ask. Well, this is anything that may be related to a patent or any form of material or information that may have been made public prior to the patent application. If there is any such material, one is supposed to notify his/her attorney of such so that the patent attorney can prepare an IDS that is, Information Disclosure Statement, which will then be submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). If you fail to disclose this information, then chances are very high that you are not going to be granted your patent request.
There is so much that you do not know about patents and internet prior arts. That is why you need professional/expert assistance. You need to find a good internet consulting firm so that you can be assisted right from the start. This way you save more money and time. You will be assisted by an expert witness in finding out whether there is any existing prior arts that could hinder the licensing of your patent. In many cases, you also have to know that the patent examiner at the government office may not do a very thorough job of finding any background information before granting your patent. Therefore the question should be: is your patent going to stand scrutiny in future or will it be rendered invalid after more prior art is discovered?
You must know that for an idea to be patented, it must not have existed before. However, verifying that indeed there are no internet prior arts is a long task and the patent examiner may not do a very good job. That is why in the US today, there are tens of thousands of patents, which have been rendered invalid after it was found out that there were undisclosed internet prior arts. You can never be too careful and therefore before you license a patent, you need the services of;
- Patent attorney
- Expert witness
- Internet consulting provider
No one can overemphasize the importance of the above three personalities or firms. If you go ahead without enlisting their services, then you are almost certainly setting yourself up for internet litigation. Now, if you think that hiring a patent lawyer is expensive, then you should know that internet litigation is going to cost millions of dollars. Why risk all that while you can get expert assistance from www.ExpertWitness.com? It is important that you do not tackle the issue of patent licensing on your own because it carries many legal implications. You want to be sure that your patent can stand a validity test in future.
Internet prior arts –importance of patent validity search
In relation to internet prior arts, a patent validity search is very important. This will bring out any preexisting material related to your patent that the examiner failed to bring out to light. This is the very first step for you if you aim to avoid internet litigations in future, be warned that anything that brings your business name out in bad light is going to do your internet marketing campaign harm. You can be sure that once the patent is issued, it will be challenged a lot in the market. It is to your benefit to make sure that you do all prior searches so that if there were any materials or internet prior arts before the patent was licensed, you can disclose them in the IDS. If you are hearing about conducting a patent validity search for the first time, it is no big deal really because you only need to enlist the professional assistance of www.PatrickOLeary.com. An internet expert witness also comes in very handy if your patent is challenged later and if the matter goes to internet litigation. However, even before it gets to that, just by hiring an expert, you will be safe.
A patent validity search is no rocket science, but you have to know a few things about it all the same. It can be extensive and therefore you have to allocate enough time for it. You and your team should frame the key features that you will use to search for any references ever made to the patent. Sometimes, your patent attorney may also want to invalidate an existing patent so that you as the client can use that patent without paying any royalties. As said earlier, there are very much legality involved in this process and you need to know as much as you can about all of them before you can start using the patent.
Internet prior arts play a big role in determining whether your patent will be licensed or not. In many cases, if you conduct a good and exhaustive patent validity search, yours will be licensed alright. Another big benefit of a validity search is that it can help you in negotiating the patent royalty payments. A search will help you determine how weak or strong a patent is and then you can apply to have the royalty fees adjusted accordingly.
One thing that you have to remember is that in internet litigation that involves patents, proof of validity is the first line of defense that will be put forward. Make no mistake about this but the truth is that you are only as good as the patent validity search. If you are not sure about this, an expert witness who is also a technologist, an internet specialist and a computer programmer from www.Social.net. In case of litigation, be ready to counter all evidence put forward by getting a good patent lawyer. The good news is that if you looked for internet prior arts first, you need not worry about litigation because your patent will stand any challenge.
With everyone going into internet marketing, the race is on to patent software where more than 20,000 patents are issued every year. However, the government examiner will not do a thorough search for internet prior arts and therefore it is your mandate to make sure that your patent is indeed valid. This is the first step for your internet business development.