Paying for Patent Protection

August is National Inventors Month. In 1998, the United Inventors Association of the USA (UIA-USA), the Academy of Applied Science, and Inventors' Digest magazine initiated a month long event to celebrate invention and creativity.

I found it interesting that during the month that honors inventors, I got a Google alert about a backlog at the US Patent Office that is thwarting inventors' ability to protect their ideas. According to an article on CBS News "the current wait for a patent is, on average, three years, or 36 months."

The consequence of this backlog is that many inventors find their ideas "knocked off" by large prosperous companies. When we interviewed women for The Right Sisters, nine of the ten women had dealt with knock-offs or copies of their products.

The CBS News article goes on to report that the patent office is self-funding, meaning that it operates on the fees charged for patents. The charge for a patent application is around $1000 with a discount for small enterprises. One theory suggests that if fees were higher, thereby increasing the operating budget of USPO, the process would speed up and protection would come more quickly.

This is a crucial IF for independent inventors who operate on a shoestring budget. While we are anxious for protection, we are often dealing with tenuous financial constraints. It's important to recognize that the increase in patent application fees would be added to patent attorney fees that are often necessary to write a strong patent application.

The dilemma this creates for inventors is confusing and difficult to sort out. If you are an inventor, would you be willing to pay higher fees for quicker protection? Why or why not?