Joe Henderson’s Post

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European and UK Patent Attorney

My first article for Onsagers AS has been published! It is a guide for technical people (not lawyers!) to think about their ideas through the eyes of the patent system. The article aims to answer the questions I was frequently asked while I was working in-house, particularly from inventors wrestling with the decision of whether to submit an idea to the patent department. From my interactions with inventors, it became apparent that they frequently underestimate the ingenuity of their ideas and overestimate the threshold for patentability. This tendency leads to the dismissal of perfectly patentable inventions by their creators, hindering IP capture. The gap in perception grows when products move from research into development. At this stage, an idea may no longer be completely ground-breaking. But that does not mean it is not patentable. Clever refinements that overcome technical problems are patented all the time. And there is often commercial value in doing so.

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