Streamlining the process.

Patent Office eases the application maze

"Slow and tedious" is how Alray Sumpter Sr., president and CEO of Selma, Alabama-based Sierra International Group Inc., remembers the two-year process of patenting his Oil Drip Collector. The Collector fits under a vehicle and collects oil and other solvents that would otherwise drip onto the nation's roads, where rain may then wash these poisonous substances into the environment. "Our product fights environmental pollution and ends blemishes on driveways," Sumpter says.

The first step, however, was to patent the invention.

Beyond the usual challenges of establishing small-entity status and supplying the required photographs and drawings, the company spent months answering "inquiries" from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

"The patent examiner went through the submission and kicked it back to our attorney. This went back and forth as the examiner compared our application to what's already on the market. The more `originality' claims we made, the better protected our idea would be. However, more claims leave more that can be questioned," says Sumpter.

When the dust finally settled, Sierra had dished out $6,000. Sumpter says he knows of small companies that have spent as much as $20,000 and waited as long as four years.

Aware of complaints that the process is too long and costly, the USPTO recently streamlined its requirements in hopes of saving inventors time and money.

Under the new guidelines, known as the Patent Business Goals (PBG) Final Rule, which take effect March 1, 2001, the USPTO hopes to reduce the time required to review applications, cut fees, and eliminate all less than necessary steps.

Under the Final Rule, USPTO gets rid of complicated requirements for establishing small-entity status and costly upfront fees associated with the failure to establish that status. Also, multiple photographs and drawings are no longer required. Impediments to electronic filing, processing, of applications have also been eliminated.

"When we make a requirement simpler to understand and simpler to comply with, we make it simpler for our office to determine compliance," says Hiram Bernstein, senior legal advisor for the USPTO. "We wish to utilize resources evaluating issues of patentability, rather than tie up an application with procedural matters."

A full printout of the PBG Final Rule can be downloaded from the USPTO Website, www.uspto.gov. It's an 81-page PDF download listing the 86 rule changes. You can also download the 15page "overview" to see which changes best apply to your situation. Then, save time and money by hiring an attorney.

"At first I tried to do it myself," says Sumpter, "but I found the process next to impossible. There are so many twists and turns that only a trained person could complete it."

Sumpter has yet to test the Final Rule, but he knows that anything that reduces the wait is welcome. "Once you get that patent, you feel relieved," he says. It's a feeling informed inventors can now afford to get sooner.