Patent Attorney and Founder
Hello everyone, I’m J.D. Houvener, your host of the Bold Today’s Show. For you, the inventor, entrepreneur, or business owner, get your daily dose of inspiration to make the world a better place. We’re here to answer the challenge question from yesterday, which is about which Patent Office you would choose if you’re going to file internationally. That will, by far and away, be the European Patent Office. That’s because you get 30 countries as part of that one package. The EU has put together 30 countries as part of their European Patent Office. So, by filing in that country, in that office, you’re able to get access to 30 different countries and all of their patent systems.
In our last segment here today, we’re going to talk about USPTO and policy. Of course, we’re moving away from utility patents today and talking about design patents. As we’ve talked about a lot in our different courses and different sessions here, the design patent varies in distinct ways. A design protects purely what something looks like, whereas the utility application and utility patent cover what it does, which is the functionality. Thinking internationally, the PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) equivalent for design patents is called The Hague Agreement. H-a-g-u-e, Hague Agreement. This was put into place just a few years ago. It’s an agreement by most of the same countries that signed up for the PCT, as we’ve talked about yesterday and the day before. This is the agreement that will align all those countries, and so they share resources, including search and examination. Please get with us if you have more questions about getting your design patent rights overseas in other countries than the US. We’re equipped to help you with that and help you file that under the Hague Agreement.
The last but not least thing I want to talk about is that by this time next week, we’re going to be able to launch a brand new discussion about design patents. We’re launching into a three-part series about design and then a focus for two more days about industrial designs. We’re bringing about innovation not just in the functional, computer-implemented inventions, but about the world around us and what it looks like. So please join us next week for more details about that. If you’ve got any comments or questions about what we talked about today, we encourage you to do that in the comment section below. I look forward to hearing from you all. Have a wonderful weekend. I’m your host J.D. Houvener of the Bold Today Show. Go big, go bold.