"Provisional on the Third Order was converted to Full Patent “non-publication” status. We do not want to stimulate competition. Protecting the newly discovered IP."
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If this is true, it may limit the patent protection to the United States, which seems exceptionally short-sighted.
In order to take advantage of the provisional application filing date, you have to file foreign patent applications within a year of filing the provisional. And you can't file a foreign patent application without publication.
ezinearticles.com
Until the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 (effective November 29, 2000), United States patents were kept in secrecy until they issued. Subsequent to the AIPA, inventors can elect to keep their application secret, but only if they will not file in a foreign country or file an application under a multilateral international agreement, such as the Patent Cooperation Treaty. If an inventor later files such a foreign or international application, it can lead to abandonment of the U.S. application unless the non-publication request is rescinded before 45 days after filing the foreign or international application. Thus, extreme caution is recommended before considering non-publication.
uspto.gov
(a) If the invention disclosed in an application has not been and will not be the subject of an application filed in another country, or under a multilateral international agreement, that requires publication of applications eighteen months after filing, the application will not be published under 35 U.S.C. 122(b) and § 1.211 ...
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We don't know the timing of all the applications, so we can't say for sure what is happening.
But the question is, are they filing for foreign patent protection? And if not, why not? If this is a game-changing technology, are they going to let the rest of the world have free access to it? |
