fern12
Joined 10 years ago
Karma
4,253
Submissions
574
Member since
Aug 20
Email is my HN username at mm.st
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Comment · 8 years ago
If going the small business route:
-Make sure you qualify as a “small business” under SBA regulations
-Make sure you have the necessary accounts (DUNS number & CAGE code) to accept Purchase Orders and be awarded a government contract. https://www.sam.gov/portal/SAM/#1#1
-For instances in which the agency may pay you via credit card, make sure that you have some way of accepting credit card payments that does NOT use a third-party intermediary like PayPal.
Comment · 8 years ago
Isn't this what Google's trying to do in downtown San Jose?
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Q8JPbI1GRBRztAAI1i...
Comment · 8 years ago
>When you submit a patent application, it becomes public forever, even if it's rejected. You will have paid legal fees with the end result of granting competitors access to your ideas.
Not entirely true. If you don't want an application to publish, there are options available. Under certain circumstances (i.e., you are 100% certain that you do not want to file for foreign patent protection in other countries), you can file with a non-publication request, and the application will not become public until it proceeds to issuance as a patent.
If it never proceeds to issuance as a patent, then filing it with a non-pub request will at least make it harder to find. It will then only become publicly available (in this case, in the USPTO's Public PAIR database) if it's referenced as a priority app in another published application or issued patent.
If it's abandoned and never referred to again in any application, then you have to file a petition to gain access to the file wrapper contents.
Comment · 8 years ago
True. But occasionally, it does happen.
https://www.ipethicslaw.com/pto-suspends-ptab-atty-who-filed...
Comment · 8 years ago
>I'll bet it's pretty easy for two companies to make a deal to pay bonuses to each other's employees when patents are granted.
With regard to the moonlighting patent examiners, I'm fairly certain this is illegal. See MPEP 309 and MPEP 1702.
https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s309.html#d0e1919... https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1702.html
Comment · 8 years ago
My favorites were VersionTracker and the MacAddict forums. A lot of the comments here on HN remind me of the MA forums, which is great.