Our Standard, Undiscounted, Design patent application legal service is Quoted above (e.g., includes Large Corporate clients); however, when available, for micro/small entities (< 20 employees, or individuals) we offer a 50% reduction down to a “Good Quality” flat fee for your product design, which is our fee to legally prepare, file, and manage the filing process for each case.  This includes a standard set of formal drawings to cover one invention/product version, done to strict USPTO legal standards.  That is for our “Good” Quality level.  We offer higher (Top) and lower (Basic) quality Design Patent legal work levels, which micro/small entity fee is currently quoted above for “Top”, and for “Basic”.

For some more general Design patent application overview information, see our page here:
https://bayareaip.com/service-details/8 

 

That is, for those seeking the best scope/level of product protection, we have a “Top” quality level if you are interested.

 

In our “Basic” service level, we pretty much capture your submitted product images into valid Design patent drawings principally drawn to your exact product. 

 

In our standard “Good” service level, we make a moderate “low hanging fruit” effort to broaden the scope/strength of your Design Patent towards avoiding obvious/common “design-around” pitfalls and loopholes. 

 

In our “Top” quality level legal drafting work more skilled members of our technical and legal team get involved in efforts towards sizing up and structuring and establishing the broadest scope of protection in the Design Patent.  In the “Top” level typical issues, considered and worked upon include::

·         identifying portion(s) or feature(s) of the product that are not particularly novel or important to the design, and, thus, should not be claimed (i.e., required to be in any infringing product), claiming the more novel features.  

·         we are available without extra charge to help you sort out simple situations if you have more than one product version (e.g., you have two or more product appearances/shaping), thus most likely two or more inventions may exist in your system design.

·         we are available without extra charge to help you sort out simple situations where you may have a product with separate (potentially independent) parts and whether or not those are intended to limit the design or if they should not be claimed.

In this way, this “Top” level generally provides much more protection, especially in situations where competitors make changes to the other, less novel portions, or seek to knock-off unclaimed/covered independent parts/designs that you may have overlooked.

NOTICE: For a U.S. design patent application (similar to a Utility patent application) there is international/foreign Design patent protection available under the relatively new Hague convention, or you may obtain foreign protection by filing patent applications directly in your countries of interest.  To claim priority to a national (e.g., USA) design patent application, you must file corresponding Hague international or foreign patent applications within six months from the filing date of your national (e.g., USA) design patent application; otherwise, it will get the date of filing at the international or foreign Bureau(s).  That said, so long as your product design has not ever been published/made public, generally speaking, you may apply for international or direct foreign design patent application which will get the date of filing it.  If the product design was over previously published then it would be used as prior art against your new foreign/international design plan application(s).  Note that once the design patent issues then it is promptly published and that would result in your losing any foreign design patent rights that were not established before such publication. Please contact us for more about establishing your foreign/international design patent rights if you are so interested.

How to Engage our Services

1)     Configure the above shopping cart options (if any) according to what best fits your situation, goals, and/or budget.   (you may always edit your cart to make any changes- see below for details)

a)     The service item may have a text entry field named "Please provide any Special Instructions...", where you should enter any specific guidance or information that may be helpful for us to properly process your order (e.g., any case number we've assigned, deadline situations, how this order relates to any other orders, etc.)

b)     The service item configuration total price will be reflected in the "Selected Combination Total" line item below any options menus.  Likewise, the "Service ID" will be updated to encode your configuration selections.

2)     Click the "select service" button to put the service item you configured into your shopping cart. You will notice shopping cart at the top right of the page, which indicates how many items it currently contains. Click that shopping cart icon anytime you want to see what items are in your shopping cart, and you'll notice a pencil icon on each item which enables you to go back and edit the item, and save your edits by again clicking the "select service" button.

3)     Click the "Checkout" button to begin the checkout process.  On the Checkout page, enter your email address, client status, and PoC information for the legal service you are ordering. Then click the “next intake page” button to proceed to the payment indication page.

4)     Make your payment off-line (i.e., not through our website) using one of the methods specified in the postscript of quoting email. Currently, online payment methods through our website are not implemented yet.

5)     After you made your payment off-line, return to the above payment page on our website where you will specify how much you paid, by what means, and some kind of transaction receipt/info for us to research and match it up to your order to approve it.

a)     NOTE: Most of our services require 100% prepayment of the quoted fee; however, if our emailed written quote indicates a lesser prepayment amount then instead of our standard full prepayment policy for reduced fixed-fee work, you can take advantage of a reduced minimum down payment fee (e.g., 50% of the quoted fixed-fee, plus any rush fee quoted) to start patent work on each case. The remaining fees are later due at least upon our completing the 1st draft of the ordered legal service for your review/revision and/or our filing.

b)     If you paid using methods like PayPal/Zelle/check/money order/bank wire/bank deposit/ etc., then during the above linked checkout process select the "off-line" payment option, which will ask you for which "off-line" payment means you use and a copy of the transaction information so that we may manually confirm and process it to credit it to your account.

6)     After you register your payment per the above, our system will guide you to our online new case intake forms to gather your administrative information for this new patent case (e.g., POC, contacts, inventors, assignees, work request details, service agreement, etc.).

7)     You will be emailed a link to proceed to our secure client portal dashboard to securely submit your materials, documents and instructions for our legal work.

8)     Our team reviews all your submissions and works with you to validate/improve anything needed for us to properly do our legal work.

 

Of course, if you have any questions not yet answered, or otherwise require any help, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will happily assist you.