US Inventors on their Marks for Race to Patent Office

I guess this means I will have to get a job with a company with resources; I can't beat them so I might as well join them. Sucks that they usually 'own' anything I might want to patent.

First-to-file can be a shield as well as a sword. Independent inventors don't need to worry, after they file their formal expensive patent application, about some corporation later claiming priority on the basis of employee testimony.

I used to think that the first-to-file system disadvantaged the independent inventor, but I have changed my mind. The availability of the $110 provisional patent application in the US system mitigates the rigor of first-to-file for inventors who have little money because they can establish their priority date for a later non-provisional application (this is the formal patent application, which is much more expensive) if they file the non-provisional within a year of the provisional. The provisional application does not have to have any claims (the lawyer part) and can be informal. So the independent inventor currently has a way to establish that he was indeed first to invent by filing a provisional application which is an "enabling disclosure" -- a description of the invention that tells a person of ordinary skill in the art how to make and use the invention. If you do that, you have achieved a "reduction to practice" of the invention even without a working model. So if you have filed a provisional you don't have to worry about your machine shop leaking the idea to some corporate giant who beats you to the Patent Office.

Patent searching is much easier now, with web resources like Free Patents Online and the Patent Office's online Manual of Classification. So it's easier to determine whether to go forward with a non-provisional or not, and inventors have a better chance of refining their applications to avoid claim rejection and expense later on. Here is a link to the fee schedule.