Patents and Strategic Inventing: The Corporate Inventor's Guide to Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage

CHAPTER 4A SIMPLIFIED VIEW OF THE PATENTING PROCESS

Now that you know what a patentable invention is, it’s worthwhile to talk about the process of obtaining a granted patent. Like most topics discussed in this book, this can be very complicated. However, we’ll be covering only the key details that a corporate inventor needs to know. While this chapter may not seem simplified, we’re actually leaving out a lot of complex issues. The following should be sufficient to illustrate the key steps in the process and familiarize you with the related documents terminology.

First, let’s talk about one of the most important attributes of a patent or patent application: its priority date. The priority date is the earliest filing date that your patent application ...