NFIB

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Protecting Your BusinessÆs Property
04/ 23/ 2003

by Tamara E. Holmes

If your business depends on the success of original products and services, you'll want to keep your physical and intellectual property out of the hands of competitors. That's where the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office comes in.

The Patent and Trademark Office, which falls under the umbrella of the Department of Commerce, is designed to promote businesses by giving inventors the rights to their discoveries. If your company comes up with a new technology for manufacturing widgets, for example, a patent will ensure that competitors don't use that technology unless they buy the right to use it from you.

Even if your company does not invent new products or services regularly, you might turn to the Patent and Trademark Office to protect your company's name or slogan. After all, a competitor armed with a name or slogan that is similar to yours can create confusion in your marketplace and even trick some of your customers into frequenting his business.

The process of filing an application for a patent or trademark can be intimidating if you've never done it, but a good place to brush up on the things you need to know is the Patent and Trademark Office Web site, http://www.uspto.gov. The site has an extensive "how-to" area, and for first-time visitors to the site, there is an area that provides information on different sub-categories, such as logos and brands.

But background information is not the only thing you'll find on the Web site. If you want to make sure you're not infringing upon someone else's patent, you can enter a category, such as semiconductor, into the online patent database and you'll get a list of patents pertaining to that category. If you're looking for a specific patent and know the patent number, you can find that as well.

Not only can information on actual patents be found online, but you can also see what patent applications have recently been filed. That way, you can find out whether one of your competitors is a step ahead of you in introducing a new product or service.

The Web site also features a link to a database that lets you search for trademarks. If you're in the planning stages of creating a new line or name for a product or service, you can see quickly whether or not the names you're considering have already been chosen.

Once you've searched the patent and trademark databases and discovered that no other company has beat you to the punch, you'll want to file your own patent or trademark application. In many cases, you can get the process rolling online via the Patent and Trademark Office's Electronic Filing System. However, only certain types of patent applications can be accepted this way. Design applications, for example, cannot be submitted electronically.

In order to use the electronic system, you'll have to download special software that helps you create the application documents and protects information when you transmit it digitally. Once you've submitted your application, you can check on the status of that application via the Web site, as well.

If you're not comfortable filing a patent or trademark application yourself, you can use the site to search through a database of 6,749 agents and 21,531 attorneys that are licensed to practice before the Patent and Trademark Office. Once you have a patent or trademark, you're not entirely home-free. There are fees associated with holding onto it. You can find out how much you owe via the Web site, and if you want to pay with a credit card or electronic fund transfer, you can do that there as well.

Minding the details involved with patents and trademarks can be tedious, but the Patent and Trademark Office is designed to help you every step of the way. The Web site goes a long way toward that goal.

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