By Joseph N. Hosteny of Niro, Scavone, Haller & Niro
Regular IP Today columnist Joseph N. Hosteny is an intellectual property litigation attorney with the Chicago law firm of Niro, Scavone, Haller & Niro. A Registered Professional Engineer and former Assistant US Attorney, his articles have also appeared in Corporate Counsel Magazine, The Docket (American Corporate Counsel Association), American Medical News, Inventors’ Digest, Litigation Magazine and Assembly Engineering Magazine. Mr. Hosteny can be reached at (312) 236-0733, or by e-mail at jhosteny@hosteny.com, or by visiting his web site at http://www.hosteny.com.
Inventing is difficult enough. But that is only the beginning of the beginning, to borrow from Winston Churchill. Getting and then protecting a patent is actually much harder than the process of inventing itself, as I wrote in my December 2004 column, “The Gobi Desert Revisited.” After the invention, there are years spent dealing with the PTO. After that hurdle has been surmounted, there are the still-hopeful inventor’s efforts to manufacture or commercialize the invention.
Many of our clients have endeavored to manufacture; some have succeeded, perhaps not so spectacularly as the two men -- Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore -- who left their jo...
