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A patent caveat, often shortened to caveat, was a legal document filed with the United States Patent Office. [1]
Caveats were instituted by the U.S. Patent Act of 1836, but were discontinued in 1909, with the U.S. Congress abolishing the system formally in 1910. [2] A caveat was similar to a patent application with a description of an invention and drawings, but without examination for patentable subject matter and without a requirement for patent claims. A patent caveat was an official notice of intention to file a patent application at a later date. A caveat expired after one year, but could be renewed by paying an annual fee of $10. [2] [3]
Caveats were similar to provisional applications used today in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) which also expire after one year. However, provisional applications today are non-renewable under any circumstances.
According to the Guide to the Practice of the Patent Office 1853, [4] the primary objective of a caveat was to prevent the issuing of a rival patent for the same invention to a subsequent inventor. Before the issuing of a patent, the caveats filed within the preceding year were searched. If one was found for the same invention as the proposed patent, the Patent Office notified the holder of the caveat, who then had three months to submit a formal patent application with claims. If the two patent applications claimed the same invention, an interference would then be declared and neither patent could be issued until it was determined which was the first to invent. [2]
Perhaps the most famous example of such a conflict was on 14 February 1876, when Elisha Gray filed a patent caveat and Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent application on the same day, both relating to the telephone. Gray ended up abandoning his patent caveat, but the case was extremely controversial and continued in the courts for many years. A deaf patent examiner (Bell was well known for his work with the deaf and had a deaf wife) had met with Bell on the matter, and a handwritten marginal note including one of Gray's critical technical innovations appeared on Bell's patent, which had not been there on the original filing.[ citation needed ]
This case contributed to the perception that patent caveats were potential leaks of valuable inventions to other applicants with friends in the Patent Office, without providing a solid legal recourse when confidentiality of the caveat was so abused. Gray did eventually win a judgement in a US court vindicating his claims, but long after: Bell was forever after known as inventor of the telephone. See the articles on Gray and Bell for details.[ citation needed ]
The filing fee of $10 for a caveat was less costly than the filing fee $15 for a full patent application. [3] As stated by the USPTO: "In 1861, the fee for obtaining a full patent was $35, of which $15 was to be paid at the time of application and $20 when the patent was granted. In 1922, the patent filing fee increased from $15 to $20." However the patent caveat fee remained $10 per year until the caveat system was abolished. [3]
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was an Italian inventor and an associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a major political figure in the history of Italy. Meucci is best known for developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone.
Elisha Gray was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Gray is best known for his development of a telephone prototype in 1876 in Highland Park, Illinois. Some recent authors have argued that Gray should be considered the true inventor of the telephone because Alexander Graham Bell allegedly stole the idea of the liquid transmitter from him. Although Gray had been using liquid transmitters in his telephone experiments for more than two years previously, Bell's telephone patent was upheld in numerous court decisions.
This timeline of the telephone covers landline, radio, and cellular telephony technologies and provides many important dates in the history of the telephone.
Prior art, in most systems of patent law, is constituted by all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality. If an invention has been described in the prior art or would have been obvious from what has been described in the prior art, a patent on that invention is not valid.
The OncoMouse or Harvard mouse is a type of laboratory mouse that has been genetically modified using modifications designed by Philip Leder and Timothy A Stewart of Harvard University to carry a specific gene called an activated oncogene. The activated oncogene significantly increases the mouse's susceptibility to cancer, and thus makes the mouse a suitable model for cancer research.
Under United States patent law, a continuing patent application is a patent application that follows, and claims priority to, an earlier-filed patent application.
In the United States, under current patent law, the term of patent, provided that maintenance fees are paid on time, is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. or international (PCT) application to which priority is claimed.
Under United States patent law, a provisional application is a legal document filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), that establishes an early filing date, but does not mature into an issued patent unless the applicant files a regular non-provisional patent application within one year. There is no such thing as a "provisional patent".
The invention of the telephone was the culmination of work done by many individuals, and led to an array of lawsuits relating to the patent claims of several individuals and numerous companies.
Under United States law, a patent is a right granted to the inventor of a (1) process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, (2) that is new, useful, and non-obvious. A patent is the right to exclude others, for a limited time from profiting of a patented technology without the consent of the patent-holder. Specifically, it is the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, inducing others to infringe, and/or offering a product specially adapted for practice of the patent.
A patent application is a request pending at a patent office for the grant of a patent for an invention described in the patent specification and a set of one or more claims stated in a formal document, including necessary official forms and related correspondence. It is the combination of the document and its processing within the administrative and legal framework of the patent office.
This is a list of legal terms relating to patents. A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention, but a territorial right to exclude others from commercially exploiting the invention, granted to an inventor or his successor in rights in exchange to a public disclosure of the invention.
In former United States patent law, a statutory invention registration (SIR) was a publication of an invention by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The publication was made at the request of the applicant. In order for an applicant to have a patent application published as an SIR, the following conditions had to be met:
George H. Sweigert (1920–1999) is credited as the first inventor to patent the cordless telephone.
The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversy concerns the question of whether Gray and Bell invented the telephone independently. This issue is narrower than the question of who deserves credit for inventing the telephone, for which there are several claimants.
A United States Defensive Publication is a published patent application for which the inventor has elected not to get patent coverage. Defensive Publications were made between April 1968 and May 8, 1985. The program, called Defensive Publication Program, was replaced by the statutory invention registration program, which itself was discontinued after the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) entered into force in 2013.
The history of United States patent law started even before the U.S. Constitution was adopted, with some state-specific patent laws. The history spans over more than three centuries.
The Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is a United States federal statute that was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on September 16, 2011. The law represents the most significant legislative change to the U.S. patent system since the Patent Act of 1952 and closely resembles previously proposed legislation in the Senate in its previous session.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to patents:
