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This report on world patent marketing review lists the top ten reasons why patenting is a bad idea, and how you can become a patent attorney to help you avoid this dangerous path.
I think it’s important to point out that there are two very dangerous (and potentially illegal) paths to patenting: you can patent something and then use your patents to make money, or you can patent something and then use your patents to get other people to make money. The latter is the approach of patenting things that aren’t useful, and the former is the approach of patenting things that are useful. This report shows the latter approach: a patent isn’t needed to make money.
The report also mentions that it is a bit scary to think about patenting yourself. I think it is important to point out that not patenting something is illegal, but patenting something that isnt used by anyone is illegal. If the only way to patent something is to file an application youve already paid for, then it is illegal. If you actually have to file an application you can patent something youre not going to use, like your own invention, and that is legal.
If youre not an inventor, you probably think patents are only for inventors. But theyre not. The concept of intellectual property is that anyone can make an idea into something that is useful. So patenting your idea is like saying you have an invention that is useful but you dont want anyone to use it. Thats the first step to getting yourself protected.
It turns out the world patent office does not really do much to protect inventors and companies who want to patent something.
The problem is that the office is constantly changing which makes it hard to keep a consistent stance on patent rights. Many of the inventors that file their first patents have nothing to do with the company that they patented it for. Because of this, the government tends to allow more and more patents for inventions that are not even invented by the inventors. This is great for companies, because they get to keep the patents while the inventors can make money.
A lot of companies like to keep their patents and the way they’re handled changes over time. For example, there is the Microsoft patent system, which gives the monopolist a big fat blank check to continue to patent everything they want after you’ve had your patent number invalidated.
The problem is that the government tends to allow patents on inventions that are not invented by the inventor. If you are a patent holder, you get a fat fat fat blank check from the government to continue to patent anything they decide is important.
There is the patent system that I’m talking about. The very first patent that Microsoft’s lawyers issued was for a method of making a Microsoft product, which is a pretty big deal since a lot of software is based on that method. Then there is the way that Microsoft’s lawyers handled the next patent application, which involved a similar method for making a Microsoft product. That patent application resulted in the company paying a huge fine to the government for infringing on their patents.
Microsofts patent system is pretty good. It’s not perfect though. There are still a lot of obvious instances where they’re wrong for a number of reasons, but that’s the nature of the system. It’s something that the company takes seriously and is constantly working to improve.
