Congratulations! We just filed a patent application in the US! What’s next?

1. We will need to supplement the application by filing a power of attorney form, an Information Disclosure Statement (IDS), and, if this is under a business, an assignment.

   1. The Power of Attorney form will allow me to speak to the Examiner on your behalf. This is especially helpful in conducting Examiner Interviews, because it reduces a lot of attorney time - a 30 minute phone call is a lot less expensive than spending 3 hours writing a brief that will be put into the public record.

   2. The IDS is a form we use to disclose to the USPTO everything we know that “might” be considered relevant to your design. Specifically, we need to disclose other designs or publications that might be similar. There is no need to search the internet for relevant publications, but if you or I happen to know of anything, we are duty-bound to disclose.

   3. The assignment is a formal transfer of rights from the inventors to the business.

2. The USPTO will examine the application to determine if it meets all the requirements (new, non-obvious, utility or ornamental). This can take anywhere from 6 - 18 months, depending on the type of application and the industry you’re in.

3. If the USPTO issues a rejection, we will have 3 months to respond with arguments or amendments to overcome the rejection.

4. Assuming we overcome the rejection, we will be “invited” to pay an issue fee to move the application to registration.

5. If we filed a utility application, we’ll need to pay maintenance fees starting 3.5 years after issue.

6. If filing internationally, we have either 6 months (for designs) or 12 months (utility applications) from the date we first filed to do so.