I have an idea I’d like to patent. Now there are three patented products involved in my idea, but my product is a combination of the three:
product one: extremely common household product
product two: uses a process to make a product similar to product one larger
product three: used only in niche businesses, too large and cumbersome for home use.
My product would use the process from product two to transform product one into product three temporarily to provide a niche product for occasional use, then back to serve the purpose of product one permanently.
according to patent law as I understand it, you can patent a product that improves an existing product or adds functionality, and my product improves all three products by adding the functionality of the others. it’s a two-in-one product created by adding a third. I’m afraid I can’t be more specific without giving too much away. Is this patentable?
Categorized | Affiliate Marketing 101
Combining Three Patented Products To Make A Combination.?
Posted on October 3, 2012.
You cannot patent an “idea” until you have an “invention” that is “new and non-obvious”. You would then file a patent application that consists of a complete description of how your invention works and the patent examiners will tell you whether or not it’s patentable.
Many people actually pay serious money to have a “preliminary patent search” done prior to filing a patent application. Some people file a “provisional application” that contains an enabling disclosure of an invention, but use the one-year grace period to solicit investors to pay for the additional filing costs.
I am a patent attorney (piersonIP.com), and you are able to patent products that are a combination of others. I am sure at one point in time Swiss army patented their knives.
The standard is if the would be “obvious to combine.” For example, at one point in time cars didn’t have lights on the front, I am sure Ford could have obtained a patent for having lights in front of vehicles even though lights and cars were already known. The standard for obvious to try was actually set out in a case where an electronic sensor for a pedal of a car replaced a mechanical sensor.
The specific standard is set out in MPEP 2141 (the code the patent office uses) which states “The Supreme Court in KSR reaffirmed the familiar framework for determining obviousness as set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co. (383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966)), but stated that the Federal Circuit had erred by applying the teaching-suggestion-motivation (TSM) test in an overly rigid and formalistic way. KSR, 550 U.S. at ___, 82 USPQ2d at 1391. Specifically, the Supreme Court stated that the Federal Circuit had erred in four ways: (1) “by holding that courts and patent examiners should look only to the problem the patentee was trying to solve ” (Id. at ___, 82 USPQ2d at 1397); (2) by assuming “that a person of ordinary skill attempting to solve a problem will be led only to those elements of prior art designed to solve the same problem” (Id.); (3) by concluding “that a patent claim cannot be proved obvious merely by showing that the combination of elements was ‘obvious to try’” (Id.); and (4) by overemphasizing “the risk of courts and patent examiners falling prey to hindsight bias” and as a result applying “[r]igid preventative rules that deny factfinders recourse to common sense” (Id. ). ”
So essentially the answer is “it depends.” If you are combining them in a unique way, you may be able to get patent protection on how they are combined.