Is There More Than One Type of Patent?
In New Jersey, there are three different types of patents that you have the option to apply for when you come up with an invention. There are utility patents, design patents, and plant patents. The utility patents protect the usefulness, the utility, of an invention. Design patents protect the ornamental design of an item, and plant patents protect actual living, growing, green plants.
In addition, there are two different types of applications for utility patents. There are regular utility patents, which are fully examined patent applications, and provisional patents, which are sort of a light equivalent of the utility patent, but it doesn’t include a section called the claims. It’s not examined by a patent examiner, but basically, it is filed with the office and is active for a year to hold your place in line if you’re in the process of deciding whether to submit a patent. It gets the process going ahead of time and enables you to use the Patent Pending designation during that time period.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a date of fifteen years of patent validity for a design patent filed on or after May 13, 2015. Those filed before that date are valid, once accepted, for fourteen years. Both utility and plant patents are valid for twenty years from the date of filing.
There are a lot of specific provisions that are taken into account for the various patents you can file for. If you want to file for a patent, you should speak with an experienced intellectual property attorney who can help you conduct a patent search and understand which type of patent you should file for once the search is complete.
Contact the Law Offices of Richard E. Novak today to discuss the facts and circumstances surrounding your New Jersey traffic, intellectual property or business litigation matters.