1. How to Patent an idea in India : going from idea to complete invention disclosure

1. How to Patent an idea in India : going from idea to complete invention disclosure

Table of Contents

How to Patent an idea in India : Start by clarifying your invention and documenting its details. Conduct a preliminary search to identify prior art and evaluate novelty. Create a comprehensive invention disclosure by answering key questions, which is then shared with patent agent or attorney for drafting and filing a patent application for your invention.”

If you are thinking, How can I make profit from the innovative idea or the invention that I have in my mind, You are not alone with such question. However, although almost every one of us have innovative ideas, very few of us actually take necessary steps (actions) to convert those innovative idea in to actual inventions and get patent protection for it, which ultimately help in making money from the patent (patent commercialisation) and enjoy other advantages of patent as well.

Whenever you get an innovative idea that you think can change the industry or it would really be solving a problem in the industry, the very next thing you may be thinking might be

“how do I protect my idea so that no one should copy it” ?

Before we start let’s consider patent law, you will find the mere (only) ideas are not patentable that means if you got just one line idea about something, then it is very early stage and it may not be patentable yet, unless it matures into and invention.

“Everything begins with an idea” and hence all granted patents also got started with an idea in the minds of their inventor at some point. then, the question is,

What is the difference between ideas that can be patented and ideas that can not be patented? and how to find out if my idea is patentable?

We need to refer to our detailed article number 3 on How to find out if my invention is patentable in India or not ? In the article about we would be discussing in detail about

  • Patentability requirements (criteria)
  • What inventions are patentable
  • what inventions are not patentable

When an idea could be patentable ?

referring to above article number 3, for an idea to be able to be patentable,

  • First, it needs to be matured in to an invention that is we need to go from just 1 line idea to an invention disclosure which has implementable details of the invention
  • second, the invention should be a patentable subject matter
  • and third, the invention should qualify the patentability criteria of Novelty, non obviousness and industrial application

implementable details of the invention (invention disclosure) in other words means, if you have sufficient details about your invention (implementable) such that when the description is read by a person skilled in the art,  he can reduce the invention in to practice without needing additional research then you have sufficient details to move forward for the patent filing.

Video on : When you are ready to file patent for your invention how much information is enough – Prasad Karhad

Going to from Idea stage to Invention disclosure stage

Let’s start from the beginning. We assume all you have is an innovative idea in your mind (or some successful results of your experiment or research project ) or you have a concept about a device or an application.

Start writing down things on paper or in a word processor document and you will find you would be getting more clarity about your innovative idea (invention)

idea to patent process

You may start by a rough sketch, or system diagram or block diagram or any relevant details of your innovative idea. you can add details like what problem it is solving, what are elements of its construction etc… don’t worry about incomplete structure or blank spots for the moment just get everything down on paper

This process is called brain dump !!! “*brain-dump is a complete transfer of accessible knowledge about a particular subject from your brain to some other storage medium, such as paper or your computer’s hard drive”

After you have taken out everything from your brain on to document, next step would be trying to answer few questions:

  • What is my innovative idea ?
  • What problem does it solve? How does it solve the problem ?
  • How my idea or invention is different from other solutions to the problem available in the market or already known in the field.
  • What are some advantages of my innovative idea?
  • How my invention function, how each element or part is associated with each other
  • Can I draw a rough sketch of my invention?
  • Can I draw a Block diagram or flowchart or any other relevant diagrams to explain it better ?

Mostly these questions are taken from Invention disclosure form which is explained in detail in our article number 2 : what is exact information needed to file a patent application

How to do a preliminary search for your innovative idea?

preliminary search for invention

Now, with the idea completely captured, or in some cases, the outcome of research or experiment is completely captured, we are going to perform small research, we call it a preliminary search.

in this preliminary search, we are trying to understand the state of the art or existing knowledge about related to our invention and if possible try to find the novel part and inventive step in our invention.

we will start the search with a list of keywords that we use to define our innovative idea. we will start with very few keywords, like your version of preferred names you use for elements, and as and when search progresses we will keep updating list of keywords with synonyms or different terminologies used for explaining elements of our invention.

example would be you may call an element of your invention as computing device. it can also be called as CPU, information processing unit, data processor or data management unit, microcontroller, microprocessor or just processor or any other name depending up on the writer where as the result we found essentially explaining same thing as our invention.

Hence keeping and updating list of keywords is important for performing preliminary search.

  • the objective of performing this search for finding the closest possible prior arts (already public information)
  • start with basic keywords and then start adding different variations of keywords using the list of synonyms and different nomenclature that we have enlisted in the previous section
  •  you can start with a simple Google search, and slowly build the research on patent-specific websites like Google patents, USPTO, European patent search, Indian patent search, etc…
  • so the probability is you will come across some important prior arts for your innovative idea which is most readily searchable, and easily available on the internet

Now, It is important not to get discouraged here seeing a lot of stuff online that is similar to your innovative idea. Keep a good record of the results you feel are very closely related to our invention and create a folder to save these results. We call them the closest possible prior arts. Find as many as possible and keep its record, we are going to review them at a later stage and these are going to prove important in the patent drafting/writing phase as well.

the definition of a new invention, as per Section 2(1)(l) “new invention” means any invention or technology which has not been anticipated by publication in any document or used in the country or elsewhere in the world before the date of filing of a patent application with complete specification, i.e., the subject matter has not fallen in the public domain or that it does not form part of the state of the art;

While reviewing results we are comparing our invention and elements of our invention with the results found (that is prior arts, existing knowledge), and ideally, some aspects of our invention should be new/novel which is not mentioned in the prior art. It is important to know that

“patents are not only given for groundbreaking inventions, whereas in reality patents are granted for incremental inventions too. That is incremental improvements in existing systems.”

What we can understand from this (and what is really encouraging ) is even if our innovative idea has some aspect that may be very small (yet significant to qualify for inventive step. ) Hence we may get the patent granted for that invention.

In other words, we might have 95% of the elements of our invention that are known to the public and in existing knowledge But even if we have 5% of our invention that is some small part of our invention which is novel, which is non-obvious to a person skilled in the art and which has industrial application then our invention would be patentable !!!

What we can learn from this is do not to get discouraged seeing thousands of or even lakhs of results in your search talking something similar to our invention, our invention still might have some inventive step in it that could win a patent.

when we are reviewing results and closest possible prior arts, look for the following things and make a note of them:

find the ways in which your invention is different or rather better in getting intended results or solving an existing problem. maybe you have some of the points in your inventions as below:

  • some aspect of it may be technically advanced or economically significant or both
  • Your way to solve the problem is more energy efficient
  • your compound, the medicine may be having more efficacy
  • your software or application is doing some advanced things to solve a problem than existing solutions

(a) Economically significant means:  your invention is better than the existing solution by saving some space or memory or costs or better speed in the same infrastructure etc…

( b) Technical advance means: your invention is using better technology or doing some additional things which are improved than existing solutions

after reviewing the results, if you found at least some aspect of your invention has either (a) or (b) or both when compared with existing solutions then it is a good sign. as discussed earlier this improvement could be small (like 1 or 2% of the entire system) yet significant to form an inventive step.

The improvement may seem small but it still can win a patent if it is novel, non-obvious (that is having inventive step), and is having industrial application.

Having said that, there is another side to it as well. When you see that there are many results in the search that talk exactly the same as your invention and in fact, there are products and services about it being used by the public and there is nothing new or improved in your invention when compared to existing knowledge, that is 100% knock out by many prior arts / existing knowledge…

Then probably yes, you may get discouraged and stop following up with that innovative idea. I would still say get opinion from patent professional before you conclude on this too.

Creating Final Draft of complete invention disclosure

while creating final draft of complete invention disclosure and at the end of this preliminary search what we have is :

  • a detailed description of the invention where every aspect of it is completely captured
  • diagrams, flowcharts and illustrations if applicable
  • comprehensive list of keywords, synonyms and search terms
  • all results of the preliminary search reviewed
  • list of closest possible prior arts
  • differences and problems with prior arts that our invention is solving
  • some aspect of our invention that are novel and non-obvious

having all this information in front of us, now we are in a position to create the most comprehensive invention disclosure also called working disclosure of the invention.

How this will save your time and costs

Now having done such important work on your innovative idea before even contacting to patent agent or attorney, this will save a lot of efforts, time and ultimately costs when you are moving ahead with patent filing for invention. Particularly this helps in:

  • eliminating a lot of rework / additional research
  • eliminating need of multiple communications and
  • reducing delays in communication from your end because you are not prepared with the required information

This will drastically reduce to and fro communications which will really help in reducing the time and costs to file the patent application as there would be no rework and crystal clear expectations are set from the word go.

And most important of all is your patent agent/attorney going to love working with you because you probably are one of the most informed clients he has come across, and he need not educate you while working with you, most of patent agents/attorneys would be delighted by the efforts you took to understand the novel and non-obvious part of your invention and coming up with really good invention disclosure and may provide you with discounts in the professional fees up to a certain extent.

Cost or fees required in this step :

Most of the steps like :

  1. inception of idea to creating complete invention disclosure
  2. signing Non disclosure agreement (NDA) with patent attorney for keeping your invention secret
  3. finding out if the subject matter of your invention is patentable or not
  4. taking judgement if novelty search required or can proceed to patent drafting and filing

all the steps above are free of cost and does not involve any fees. Your fees starts only when you decide to do novelty search or proceed with patent drafting and patent filing steps.

Conclusion :

  • good innovative ideas can be converted to a property (intellectual property like patent) by working on it to create invention, then protecting it by patent and then commercialising the patent for making profits.
  • a good idea is a starting point and there are steps and actions to be taken to find out if it is capable of an invention that can win patent and if it has commercial potential in the market to be profitable.
  • when you go from idea to invention disclosure Next step would be finding out if the invention is eligible subject matter for patent in India this step does not cost any money
  • and then next step would be to find-out if it has novelty or not by conducting a Novelty search. 

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Prasad Karhad
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