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Patents Corner
Is it an invention?
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by Becky Mahurin
Researchers often express concern that they may not know when they have invented something. One may then not take appropriate steps to protect a product that may have commercial potential. The following excerpts from the Winter 1996 issue of Intellectual Property Advisor provide good advice.
"If your focus is the progress of your research, it's very natural that you may not be thinking about potential spin-offs from your work. Even if the aim of your research is far removed from the commercial world, it's possible that a tool or method you had to develop to solve a problem in the contest o a particular project may have applicability outside your lab or even outside your field. How do you know when you've invented something?
"The first step is to stop and reflect on your work every so often. Perhaps you hold a weekly progress meeting with other members of your lab. (We hope you have 'notebook corroboration day' each week, when everyone switches notebooks to read and sign. This is one step in the good record-keeping procedures that support your case for a patent.) If you regularly make the time, then you might build up the habit of asking, have we invented something?
"But is it an invention? The National Institutes of Health rules say, 'The term "invention" means any invention or discovery which is or may be patentable or otherwise protectable.'
"In brief, a patent may be obtained for any method, machine, manufactured article, 'composition of matter,' or improvement to one of the above, which can include genes and gene products, and software. To qualify, the invention must also be new, useful and non-obvious to a person skilled in the art.
"A simpler first question to ask yourself every so often: how else could this be used? And even more important for its commercial potential: is it better, faster, cheaper than the alternatives? Another clue is if other researchers keep dropping by to borrow your device or if you notice an inordinate interest in the details from attendees at your conference presentations."
If you have any questions regarding a potential invention, please call me at 994-7868.
Becky Mahurin
Director of the Technology Transfer Office at MSU
© 2000 Montana State University-Bozeman
Discovery April 1996
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