Re: Need help from Snipers!!! Please help
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Shot In The Dark</div><div class="ubbcode-body">...my last job at an engineering firm had a patent attorney who said that once you make something public -prior to applying for a patent- you made it indefensible, we obviously don't know the specifics and are both operating on hearsay.</div></div>Your profile says that you are moving to law school to study patent law. If so then why wouldn't you look it up?
Have a look at Title 35 of the United States Code. According to what I read an invention must meet several requirements to be eligible for a patent: The invention must concern patentable subject matter (section 101); the invention must be novel and the application for a patent on the invention must be timely (section 102); the invention must be non-obvious (section 103); and the invention must be sufficiently documented (section 112).
Now look at the conditions in Section 102: What you are referring to might be the general limitation on patent rights that in the U.S. the owner cannot have publicly disclosed the invention anywhere in the world for more than one year prior to the filing of the patent application (but see also 35 U.S.C. Section 273: A limited, not for profit academic experimental use exception).
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Shot In The Dark</div><div class="ubbcode-body">...once you show it off to the public (pre-patent application) you render it impossible to defend. Thus, the patent is worthless and is not worth pursuing, hence - no longer patentable.</div></div>Of course none of this is advice but, based on what you yourself said, any general statement that making an idea public prevents a patent can't possibly be accurate. Nor can any conclusion that a patent is 'imposssible' to defend because any attempted defense would make a defense possible. Nor would it make sense that a patent application which is impossible to defend is worthless because the defense costs something. And, it makes even less sense to say that a patent application no longer worth pursuing is no longer patentable because whether it's worth pursuing has nothing to do with whether or not the patent can be obtained.