She Got a Patent, But Copycats Stole Her Idea
Sometimes a patent is just a piece of paper, as Mary Brock found out when she discovered a product remarkably similar to her patented Doggie poop freeze wand for sale:
One day in 2007, I was browsing through a catalog that included pet-related products.Right before my eyes was an ad depicting a product that bared the two most descriptive words in the title of my recently patented invention. It was a derivative of one of the claims in my patent application, and is used for the purpose described in my patent.
My heart pounded and my world crumbled. I became angry, yet eager to know more about this product.
I ordered it from the catalog. The packaging had a “Patent Pending” notice.
I searched for more information about this product, which hit the market in 2004. That distressed me even more, because I knew my patent was granted in 2005. I also discovered it’s sold in several countries.
I didn’t find a patent, but I did find a trademark for the name given to this product. I thought, ‘This company stole my idea and had the nerve to trademark the descriptive name so that I could not use it.’
Brett Trout on September 9th, 2009 12:39 pm
It looks like this woman may have written the patent herself. This typically leads to very narrow patents, which are easy to “design around.” Likely the company with the “patent pending” hired a patent attorney who filed a patent with a much broader scope of protection.
The problem in this case does not seem to be the patent, but rather the patent drafter. In the hands of a skilled neurosurgeon scalpels can be valuable. In the hands of the wrong person however, they can be quite deadly. This woman’s ordeal should serve as a teachable moment about the problems inventors encounter when they try to draft patents themselves.
RedHotFranchises on September 10th, 2009 2:13 am
All kinds of things can happen when a patent is publicly published before it is granted, there are full of competitors lurking out there seeking to reinvent your wheels, whatever we can think of, someone is definitely also thinking about it, some would just ignore it, or are in the process while the others would blatently copy it, the right people would only have to see it once.
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