By Joseph N. Hosteny of Niro, Scavone, Haller & NiroMy IP Today columns often focus on the difficulties independent
inventors face while patenting
their inventions, and defending them from infringement later on. In fact, the process can become so
difficult
that two of my past columns—"The Long Walk from the Gobi Desert to the River Styx" (January 2001)
and "The Gobi Desert Revisited" (December 2004)—compared it to trekking through the desert, where
the inventor is confronted by numerous obstacles. Since I am an intellectual property litigation attorney,
my
columns most often focus on the problems inventors face when infringement ensues. But, quite
honestly, when an
independent inventor creates a product and protects it with a patent, there's a reasonable chance that
it will be infringed. The chances that he may regret ever having patented his invention are high, as
well.
In my first "Gobi Desert" column, I described the obstacles facing one of our clients, a physician,
starting with the complexity of the invention process itself:
He saw a problem, conceived his invention, researched and found suitable materials, scraped together
a few dollars,
paid machinists to make tools, cobbled together prototypes of his invention, tested the prototypes, hired
patent
attorneys, filed a patent application, wrote to and called any number of medical companies, visited
many of them,
negotiated license agreements, got sued, was d...
