Linda Thayer is a unicorn among intellectual property attorneys—a blend of experienced litigator and patent portfolio strategist, with deep knowledge in both patent law and multiple complex technologies. Linda excels at guiding high tech clients in developing strong intellectual property portfolios and defending their patent assets before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and in federal courts.
Linda Thayer talks about how to how to apply for, maintain and use patents. She tells us about the benefits of getting in touch with a patent attorney early in the innovation process. She then walks us through the process of applying for a patent, key dates and important steps. We also get to hear about defending your patent and international patents.
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Per: Welcome to the podcast version of Robots in Depth. This episodes interview is with Linda Thayer and is produced in cooperation with Wevolver. Robots in Depth is supported by Aptomica. Visit Aptomica.com to connect. You will find all past episodes and more in RobotsInDepth.com. Welcome to Robots in Depth. Today, I'm honored to have Linda Thayer here from Finnegan and we're going to talk about the fact that when you start a robotics company IP patents and the legal side is something you must really care about and really focus on. I know that you're all busy during the development of hardware and software but do not forget the IP side. Do use a good contact there and she's going to tell us all about how to do that properly. Welcome.
“When you start a robotics company IP patents and the legal side is something you must really care about and focus on”
Linda: Thank you for having me.
The process of patents
Per: Usually this would be a new area to a start-up rather than an established company. They probably already have somebody dealing with this. I’m a start-up, I may be a PhD student and I have this great idea. My professor who’s experienced says that this probably has a value so I'm going to start a company but I've done nothing. I've done my research and I now come to you. What would be the advice you give me? What milestones to hit and how to carry on before and during for a start-up company?
Linda: I like your assumption. You said I come to you very early in the process. That’s not often the case. Very often, in many start-ups in the robotics community, the idea is so exciting and the company or the individual starts building the product and starts wanting to get funding and they go very far down the track before they have really addressed IP. If there's one message that it could be is exactly what you said is really try to involve some IP counsel earlier in your process. I do know that with start-ups that often it's the time versus money trade-off. They really want to get a product underway and they often do not have funding and they think of lawyers as the scary expensive component to the whole process but that can be a problem and could be short-sighted. I think if a new start-up at least consults with somebody early in the process. They can help you outline the steps so that you don't miss any critical deadlines or below your opportunity to patent before you even start.
Per: I think that as you say this is a very stressful time for somebody starting and lawyers can be expensive but I think it's a very expensive mistake of avoiding this because it can really be a problem down the line. I would presume that most investors would require a strong IP protection of whatever they're investing in if that's patents or trademarks or anything like that because otherwise technology is too easy to copy in my opinion.
Prior art search component
Linda: That's absolutely right. It’s funny. Even earlier this morning, I was working with one of my clients on putting together some information for their investor and the questions that they asked are have you applied for patents? If so on what subject matter? How did you decide what subject matter to put in your patent application? Did you do a prior art search to see if there was prior art search on this in this area? Have you researched the market to see who's already a player? The prior art search component is important because for two reasons it lets you know what's already out there. It might help you design around somebody that's already out there and also it may expose some opportunities for development if you find that there are no patents in this area, no companies already working in this area. It might expose some nuance that you can add to your application that would make your technology even more valuable.
Per: Yes and also kind of start to claim your space in an IP sense. Could you give us a timeline?
Timeline of the IP process
Linda: First juncture to consult somebody when you have an idea because I would recommend that you do this prior art searching and you do an industry search to see if it's an idea that you might be already pre-empted from doing development in that area. I wouldn't want you to spend time and resources going down a path that's foreclosed because it's already covered so that's one. You start down the path and you have a product or you have an idea and you start to write it up or think about it. I want you to come to a patent attorney and take some steps before you disclose it to the public, before you disclose it to potential investors. My recommendation would be to write your ideas yourself in the form of a long technical paper and file that as a provisional application with the USPTO, the Patent and Trademark Office. That acts as a government document, it's not disclosed right away but it acts as assurance that you have that idea as of that date. It acts as a priority date is what we call it and if someone comes along with the idea after you and registers after you it sort of saves your place in line. It's the government that would know that you had the idea first. You can also then disclose it to investors and others because you have put your stake in the sand and you have reserved your place in line. I would just caution people to not disclose more than what they put in the provisional.
Per: Then they need to add another provision what they want to disclose.
Provisional patent application
Linda: Exactly and that would be my third piece of advice is that you know once you do file a provisional you have to be diligent about. If you have significant additional research or additional ideas I would advise a client to file a supplemental provisional and keep also the one-year deadline in mind from the first provisional because you need to convert the provisional to an actual utility application before the end of the one year.
Per: It's called the provisional patent. Could you say the title so people could Google for it?
Linda: Provisional patent application.
Per: Provisional patent application. Somebody comes to you and it's not an overly complicated idea, can you give us a rough estimate on the cost of that? If they come to you and they want you to help them to file this because they don't feel comfortable with the legal side.
Costs of a provisional patent application
Linda: The great thing about a provisional patent application is it doesn't have filing formalities and other things that require a patent attorney to write them. We have done everything from the low end of the scale where a client has a draft written and done all the drawings and prepared the provisional patent application. We review it to just make sure that there's content in there and get it on file. The filing fee for a provisional application is less than $300 for a large company and less than $200 for a small company.
Per: We're talking in the few hundred dollar range.
Linda: For the official filing fees yes and then the costs are going to depend on how well-written the provisional is. I have had some people come to me with a document that needed significant help in which case you then are paying an attorney or someone an hourly rate to help you. I have also had people come to me that was a very well-written document and I was able to file it with minimal review time and that's of course the low end of the scale but assuming that you write a good document...
Per: Or average one.
Linda: You could get a provisional on file for under $500.
Per: I mean that's probably a very well invested $500.
Linda: it's a very well invested and if you absolutely have no amount of cash at this time like I said the filing fee for an individual is a $160 I think, maybe $180. You can download the filing sheet from the USPTO website and file it yourself.
Per: They've done this now and then they found out oh, we need to add this little idea. They could do this supplemental then.
Patent application should be complete with technical details
Linda: Exactly and you pay another filing fee. You file another document but I'd like to add one point to what you were saying earlier is I do agree that you sort of get what you pay for and there is some value to consulting legal advice. Sometimes what I find is that people write their documents more as a marketing document and they talk about with functional language as to what they hope to do, what benefits their product will provide but they don't really explain enough of the technical details. The patent law in the United States, it's really changing such that the Patent Office is requiring more detail, more explanation of how you're different from the other things that are out there and what technological improvement your invention brings to the field. What I can say when people write Provisionals themselves I don't think they focus on that level of detail. That's what the review of a patent attorney could bring is maybe to point out the degree to which you need to add technical details in order to ultimately make your patent application successful at the Patent Office.
Per: Don't be afraid of the technical details in this stage and everything you add in to is protected then if you go on to file for a proper patent.
Linda: Exactly more is better.
Per: You don't need to sell the idea to the Patent Office. That’s what you do to your investors and customers. They need to know the technical side and the sales pitch can be kept for other documents.
Linda: Some of this sales pitch would be useful. I mean the type of statements that are good for a patent application is what improvements in terms of speed or economies or just amount of data that you have to store or the price of the invention. If your invention improves in in those types of categories then I would mention that because that helps make the invention ultimately patentable. If you call that marketing advice some of that is good.
Per: Now we know a bit more about that and I guess there's also tutorials online and examples where you point out the good stuff and the bad stuff and all that. Then we have a year and in during that year we then have to prepare a proper patent application and that takes some time because we have to start basically ahead of time before we have this deadline because then we have to submit this proper patent application. How long a time do you think we should say to prepare the final document?
Proper patent application
Linda: We estimate that it takes between 30 and 50 hours of a patent agent or patent attorney drafting time. We don't work 30 hour days although sometimes we might need to. You need to factor in the fact and back it up a couple of weeks or ideally a month before your filing deadline. Of course the provisional application is not examined so there's nothing that says you have to wait for the year in order to get this done. If you're interested in getting a patent sooner or getting an actual utility online then I would advise you to begin that process sooner and not wait the full year. There’s also some accelerated procedures before the Patent Office that you might want to take advantage of to try to get an actual patent sooner if that's important to your market. Maybe you already know there's people out there that are infringing and you want to be able to stop them to get market share or if your investors really want to see that the tires are kicked and that the patent will be successful.
Per: Because there's a big difference between an application and an actually granted patent.
Patent pending application
Linda: There's a big difference between a provisional which is a placeholder, a utility application which is I've filed for it but I don't know if I'm going to get it yet although you can say patent pending and investors do like to see that you've at least made that effort. There’s a big difference of course a granted patent is...
Per: That's the end of end product of this process. Then we talk the utility patent is that that's when you submitted for a patent but you haven't been granted it yet. That’s when you can say patent pending.
Linda: You could say patent pending when you have filed for a utility patent application.
Per: Then somewhere down the line you get granted a patent or they come back with comments and saying what do you mean here? Does the Patent Office come back to the inventor and say this isn't clear. You have to improve the application and how long time does this usually take?
Linda: You cannot make an application more clear because the application when it's filed as a utility application has to be complete and clear on the day you file it. You cannot amend that at all.
Per: There's no second chance.
Linda: There's no second chance. If you do you would have to file a second application, add more material but then you get a second filing date and we call those continuations in part. It’s possible to add the material or make something clear.
Per: The new part will be covered from a later date so if somebody added the new parts...
Linda: If somebody snuck in there in between you two then they would have priority over the added material. It is common for the Patent Office to reject your application. They’re rejecting your claims and you can make the claims more succinct, more specific, more narrow to more accurately describe your segments that you want to try to get a patent on.
Per: Because you can't just patent everything too broadly then they say well this would patent pretty much everything. You have to patent a specific idea.
Linda: Exactly and that is where a patent attorney can be very helpful and I would say is needed is to the claims are very specifically written. They have to follow the format and by the Patent Office and they have to be narrowly tailored to carve out your invention or accurately describe your invention and if not it'll be rejected or you may get a patent that is too narrow and is ultimately not worth anything because nobody would make the product the way that you've written the claims or it may be ultimately even though if it's issued by the Patent Office or granted by the Patent Office it could ultimately be unenforceable if the claims are too narrow. You want to make sure that the claims are written with the exact scope that you want.
Per: Okay this is probably a very scary process for a young entrepreneur or any entrepreneur but I guess this is also why having a good partner in this is essential. Now the company has the patent. They’ve been granted a patent and they've used that and other resources to acquire funding and they are about to launch or have launched the product and then they find that somebody is infringing on them or they believe that. Then they come to you and say look at this guy. He’s making something looking virtually what doing what we do. What’s the process there?
Patent infringement
Linda: In that process they would consult us and say I have a patent. This guy or this company is doing something we think is close and they asked us to evaluate it because it goes back to the claims. Is there any interpretation of what they're doing that falls within the scope of the claims? Sometimes at the engineer level they see a product that on its face looks the same but when we scratch beneath the surface they are doing an implementation detail, a design around that does not fall squarely within the claims. In that case we might suggest to the patent holder that type of product is described in your application and you're entitled to that but the claims don't show it. In that case we might have some strategies for getting claims to that. If they're already doing so you can't add it to your application however this goes back to a well drafted application. When you're drafting your application we recommend that you not just limit yourself to how you are building your mousetrap but think about improvements, possible deviations, how somebody might design something slightly different. It's not because we're trying to get too broad of an exclusionary right but engineers sometimes think only of the way they are making it today and then we file the application and they say well we did it using A because that's what I had in the lab but we could also make the same thing with the same results using B. Before we file during the drafting process we engage with the inventors this way. I see you've built it this way. Are there alternatives that would achieve the same results?
Per: Let's add those to the application.
Continuation and divisional application
Linda: At the application before filing so it's possible though that we could have claimed the first way of doing it, the way they built the mousetrap. In the description we've described this alternative way in which case we can file an application. It’s called a continuation or a divisional on that second way of doing it because we described it.
Per: What dates would then apply if we add the continuation? Would it be the original date or the second date?
Linda: The original date which is the argument for trying to put every possible alternative and every possible combination of components and all the ideas that you have in the one application because we can go back to them and you can get patent protection on those ideas to the extent they are described in the original application.
Per: Then we get it from the first date because the calendar is very important in the patent world with the dates and the timelines. We have the opposite problem. Somebody’s claiming that we infringe on their patent. I guess this is probably more critical part for a start-up because they're not going to go out and sue people. They’re busy trying to deliver to their customer but if they get sued they have to defend themselves. They can't really choose the timeline there. They get a nasty letter. They come with a letter to you and what would the process be then?
How to handle a patent infringement charge?
Linda: There's two ways to combat a charge that you are infringing somebody else's patent. Either you come back and say no, I'm not and you have to have support for the fact that you don't. You say while your patent has granted we think your patent should not have been granted.
Per: We have seen a lot of that in the computer industry.
Linda: As I was saying earlier sometimes on the face of things it looks like something is falling within the scope of the patent but when you scratch beneath the surface you're doing it a different way than the way they claimed. A fair amount of the time when somebody sends a letter to one of our clients we are able to know the details of our clients’ product and go back to them and say you think so but it only looks like that's what's happening on the surface. Here’s some detail under. There's an agreement that we can sign a protective order. We can exchange information to show them that little bit of information that they need and sometimes they will go away. Sometimes they're more persistent. Sometimes we disagree on whether that falls within the claimed scope of the claims or not and then in which case we will then also do a prior art search and see if there's some arguments that we can go to the Patent Office with to ask the Patent Office to withdraw the patent.
Per: Because the patent that was originally granted by the one suing the client was not really patentable to begin with.
Linda: The Patent Office does a very good job of examining and trying to only issue valid patents.
Per: But it's a very hard job.
Linda: It's a very hard job. There’s a lot of information out there and the examiners do not have in my opinion adequate time to do a complete and full review. Not like if you're faced with a litigation, its possibility of taking down your company you're very focused on that search. We are often able to find prior art that we can go back to the Patent Office and say hey, you missed this piece of prior art. No harm no foul but now we want to see if you could withdraw this patent.
Per: Also because we've seen some software patents when the idea they managed to get a patent on are so obviously simple. It’s like patent water or air or something. We’ve seen that happen in the software industry and that's led to a lot of problems for the software industry. The Patent Office is they're dealing with cutting-edge technology that probably only the inventor understands or knows so it's very natural that they're really struggling. It’s a very hard job they set themselves out to do when they try to regulate new technology because it's by definition unknown to most people. I also know that there's the strategy of submitting prior art to the Patent Office. You have your patent. You have a portfolio of patents in your area but there's also stuff that you know that you probably couldn't get a patent on but you want them to know that it's there and that it's prior art. Can you talk a bit more about the formal process of providing prior art to the Patent Office if there is such a process?
Process of providing prior art to the Patent Office
Linda: Yes, there is such a process. It's not very widely used and I think the reason is there's a little bit of a distrust that the Patent Office will adequately appreciate that piece of prior art. More entities want to sort of reserve that as a quiver that they can use at a later date. We have on behalf of some clients submitted some prior art during prosecution of a competitor's patent. The problem is that if the examiner doesn't appreciate it and issues the patent then you can't ever use that prior art again. If you submit it and the examiner agrees with your comments and the applicability of the art then maybe you will prevent the application from getting granted but it also gives your competitor an opportunity to perhaps draft claims around it and get a patent albeit a few months later than they would have otherwise. For the most part though we stockpile that prior art and use it in other procedures before the Patent Office or in use it in negotiations if that person with the patent comes to you with the letter we might use it in negotiations.
Per: Because that's also representing your particular client I guess. If you know this and then you can have that as you say as a quiver. We have a US patent and we think our idea is great. Everyone’s going to want it. They’re also going to want it abroad. We have a certain provisional filing date then we're thinking already now what we do abroad because our investors realize that the world is a big market. How do we do it? What’s the timeline? I mean I guess the application has to be translated to different languages but the application as such is the same or does it have to be adapted to different countries, different rules and regulations?
Patent applications outside the US
Linda: First let me address the timeline so you do have the one-year time bar as a deadline for getting applications on file, a utility application on file in the US and also for applications in other countries. That’s the argument also for not waiting until the one-year deadline because if you're going to file abroad you really should plan that at least a month before the one-year deadline. What would I counsel clients to do? The law does vary a little bit from country to country. If we know upfront that you want to file in different countries we will draft the application with those other countries in mind. One big market for example is Europe and the drafting styles between Europe and US have gotten closer in recent years. We do have an office in London with European patent practitioners and we would run the application by our European practitioners and see if they think we should add anything. We have an office in Shanghai and we don't practice Chinese law there but we would consult foreign consultants if you want to file there to see if it meets qualifications before we file it.
Paris Convention Treaty
One cost-saving measure that we use quite frequently is called the Paris Convention Treaty or a PCT application. A PCT application acts as a rest of the world place holder so on or before the one-year anniversary we would advise filing in the US and filing this international placeholder called the PCT application. What that does is reserve your right to file and the rest of the all of the countries that are members of the Paris Convention Treaty which is it's all of the developed world pretty much. That gives you an extra 18 months to decide which country you want to file in and it buys you 18 months to get translations to the extent they're needed. It’s not like the robotics community is filing in all the countries in the world. When we sit down with a client to devise a foreign filing strategy we look at a couple of different things. You want to look at where will your technology be used, where your technology will be built which is why China is often a source of place to file patents, where are your competitors and does the country have a good patent enforcement, patent granting system? That does limit where most companies tend to file. I have to say that for most of the clients in the robotics field we're only filing in about five to seven jurisdictions.
Per: We're talking the US, Canada, Europe.
Linda: We're talking about US, Europe, China, Japan, Korea, software sometimes India, Canada, Australia, the countries that make it very easy for us to file in and that have large markets in terms of potential users of the device and people that have manufacturing facilities tend to be where we file.
Per: It is in that handful or two handfuls of countries we have to address and that's a manageable for even a smaller company.
Linda: It's manageable but the costs can easily mount up. If you were to file in ten jurisdictions the filing fees alone will probably be $50,000 because of translation costs and the independent countries own official filing fees to the individual Patent Office.
Per: That starts to be a significant cost and the deadline will then be two and a half years after our first US application.
Linda: Right which is why the PCT allows a company to spread out their cost. If you file at the one-year mark in the US and you file the PCT application, PCT application probably will cost you $2000 to $4000 and the reason I can't be more exact is because it depends on how many claims. It depends on the length of your application. There’s a per page fee in in both countries and a per claim extra fee so it varies. Once you file the PCT then your fees to these individual foreign patent offices you wouldn't have to pay them for another 18 months so it allows you to spread out the fees.
Per: Also maybe acquire more funding or simply see if the idea is something you'd like to carry on with.
Linda: It's a good point. A lot of clients that are working a way up they file in the provisional. They file in the US and the PCT and then they entered that year-and-a-half where they see whether their technology is going to take off and whether they're going to get acquired, whether they're going to just gain speed as a company.
Per: Also you can do all the preparation work and then really push the final formal application towards the end of that period. If all your work is done the filing is can be done towards the end of the period which is the filing fees for all these countries do add up.
Linda: They do but the filing that we would do into the individual countries is administrative because we file a copy, carbon copy of the PCT application. We cannot add new matter or else there would be a new priority date. All the drafting has to be done and the most attention has to be paid to that utility application that is drafted at least one month before your one year filing date.
Per: I think that something that a start-up really has to think about is the timeline here. There’s lots of dates to keep in your head and not make a mistake and thinking it was next month because that can be very expensive. I think that in the team there's probably supposed to be somebody that takes care of this so that it doesn't get dispersed among the team members too much because there's a lot of dates to keep in mind. Then that the company becomes a success either its acquired and then that’s somebody else's problem. Is there any further dates when my patents starts to expire? Do I have to renew it? Do I have to work with my patent after it's been granted?
Expiration of a patent
Linda: The US has a mandatory maintenance fees at the three and a half, seven and a half and eleven and a half marks of a 20-year term and you do have to pay those in order to keep your patent in force.
Per: How much are the fees in general?
Linda: I want to say $1700 or something that. I don't know exactly.
Per: In the couple of thousand dollar range.
Linda: A couple of thousand dollars. European countries and some other countries do it differently. They charge you annuity every year but the annuity is smaller. The annuity might be a couple of hundred dollars and it might be constant over the 20-year term. In the US the maintenance fees do get more expensive as you go, the eleven and a half year maintenance fees is more expensive than the three and a half year which that's fine because in this technology area oftentimes people get a patent. They might pay the first maintenance fee at three and a half and the technology might be obsolete so they don't pay the final two and they let it just be expired.
Per: Because if you don't pay the patent expires and it becomes public domain at that point anybody could use the technology. You couldn't even use it to defend yourself. We pay all these fees. We worked with our patent. When does it expire totally so to speak?
Linda: 20 years from the date of the provisional if you use a provisional or 20 years from the date of the first utility filing if you don't use a provisional.
Per: That gives you in theory 19 years or 20 years of patents so that's also another time scale although as you say in a fast-moving technology world I doubt that any technology would be significantly valuable 20 years from now although that can happen. We are approaching the 20 year deadline here, I mean this is not for the young start-up but who knows maybe this could be interesting to look into the future and prepare so we are at year 18 or 19. We of course have other patents with running times too but one of our main patents is approaching 20 years. What do we do?
Enforcement of expired patent
Linda: At that point there's nothing you can do to extend the life. You might want to make sure to look around and see if anybody is making the product because it is possible to enforce the patent even after it's expired because under statute you can get damages or money for people's prior use of your patent up to six years before the date that you tell them they're violating it. It is possible for your patent to be expired and then you say oh you've been using it for six years. I want six years of back pay so to speak. We’ve evolved our technology and I guess what you have to look at over the duration of your patent portfolio is how do we use our patent in combination with it. We came with our first patent. It was our first idea but we're always in the same domain because we have an expertise in a certain domain. When we're finished with our first patent we're already working on our second or third or fourth and they all have different running times. Being in this reasonably tight space how do we build a patent where our increased understanding of the technology, our increased development of new technology and our increased understanding of the customers’ needs. A company's not going to have one patent. It’s going to have a portfolio of patents. How do we make a good puzzle there?
Culture of understanding IP
Linda: It's exactly the way you said. You want to file that provisional as soon as you have a good core of ideas but then you want to file subsequent Provisionals or subsequent utility applications building on the idea. Anytime that your team comes up with a new development that would be a good time to contact the patent attorney or sit down and think about an additional application. It's good for a company as it grows to build this culture of understanding of IP and that as soon as we have an idea that is as formed well enough that we can recreate it and talk to somebody about it we should be thinking about how to protect that and adding to the portfolio with another application.
Per: Also adding the prior art tool that could be available to us in the future when somebody thinks about something added to the process so that if we get into trouble we have that stored in some formal way so that we can access it. We talked about the patent process from a start-up perspective and that means we've talked about the first time somebody does a patent. We have these patents do we have to relate a new patent we're doing to the old stuff? Could we tie them together? Should the claims be matching? Is there anything that we think of when we do the second or third or fourth patents?
Cross-citing
Linda: You don't have to and most companies as they grow they will have families of patents that are related but they don't have to be related and sometimes there's a family of patents related to the hardware and a family related to the software and a family related to the mechanics or something. The one thing to pay attention to is there is a duty to disclose to the Patent Office prior art that you know about. If you do not disclose the prior art, if you somehow hide it, it could make your patent unenforceable. What we do a lot of is when we're working for one client we keep track of the prior art that one examiner has used against an application in this family because we're presumed to know about it. Then we make sure that the examiner in this family knows about that prior art if it's relevant so that there's no issues down the road that we knew about a piece of prior art and we hid it from the other examiner. We call that cross-citing. That’s an information disclosure statement is the official term for the notice that we give to the patent office of the prior art that we know about.
Per: Of course our own patents are known prior art ourselves. If we are patenting an idea that is close to one of our own patents we are presumed to know that that exists because it's of course hard for the processor to know what we knew at a certain given time. It’s not easy but our own patents we're supposed to know.
Linda: Yes, it can be prior art against another patent in your own family.
Per: I guess you advise the client on how to structure the patents so that that they kind of fit together and somebody further down the line, for a start-up that's not going to be very relevant because they're struggling to do a one or two or a few patents rather than to build families.
A family of patents
Linda: If we are consulted early in the process for even a newer company that's one of the things we would do. We would sit down and create an outline of all the patentable aspects of the invention and we might group them. We might prioritize which ones we want to get issued first if money is an issue. We want to maybe file these first, file these later. It will depend on which patents might be more attractive to investors, maybe which ideas that we think somebody else might copy or something. There’s a whole lot of strategy into which ones we pursue if budget is an issue.
Per: One patent might be in a very crowded patent environment. One might be in a deserted environment where there's not many patents and that could also play in. To summarize this for a start-up. It is contact you early, look at the calendar. There’s lots of dates to do and that the costs ranges from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars and up to a worldwide patent would be in the $50,000 range so to speak. Of course this has many variables but this is so that they have some form of a basic knowledge of the area. Is that true?
Best practice for start-ups
Linda: I think your best advice is to contact us early or contact a patent attorney early. I think we can lay out for you very easy what the timelines are, what the pitfalls are. Give you a roadmap for what you need to do and when you need to do it to make sure none of that is missed. Don't be afraid of the patent attorneys. At Finnegan, we're all former engineers. We’ve been in your shoes. We decided to go over to the dark side and get a law degree but it's because we want to add that legal component to our engineering expertise and assist engineers in getting their inventions patented but it's only if we are contacted early that we can always help you. Even later on we can but then it becomes more strategic. We might need to correct a few things or there might be some things missed.
Per: Unnecessary complications, unnecessary costs may be and also a less valuable patent in the long run. Also maybe doubt in the investor community if this is going to work out. Thank you very much. I hope that the start-ups really take this to heart and that we're going to see a great number of patents coming out. This is also important for the long run when the patents expire. They become public domain and everybody can use the technology and benefit from it. The patent system as a fundamental structure is very important for just society.
Thank you very much. I hope you liked this episode of the podcast version of Robots in Depth. This episode is produced together with Wevolver. Wevolver is a platform and community providing engineers informative content to help them innovate. It is how engineers stay cutting edge. Aptomica is the founding sponsor for Robots in Depth. Aptomica runs anything in modular robotics. Dream, rent, build. Visit Aptomica.com to connect. I am your host Per Sjöbor. Until the next episode thank you for listening.
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