Mark
This has been discussed many times on this forum suggest you do a search for patent

Bob

Mark,

When you ask a question which involves legal issues, it is essential to specify where you live, as the laws may vary.

In the UK, the law on patents is covered by The Patents Act 1977. S 60 (5) provides a list of acts which will not be regarded as infringments of a patent, and item (a) applies to the case you raised:

(5) An act which, apart from this subsection, would constitute an infringement of a patent for an invention shall not do so if –

(a) it is done privately and for purposes which are not commercial;

You should be fine to make a version of a patented device at home for your own use. Note that both things must be true: the act is done privately and for purposes which are not commercial. However, I doubt you would get into trouble for showing it to your friends!

You can find the legislation (including all later amendments) at **LINK** if you are feeling the need to cure your insomnia.

David

David

Neil,

Good point; I was guilty of being slightly tongue-in-cheek. It does not seem to be entirely clear exactly what the Act means by "privately". If it simply means "not for profit" then it seems to be redundant as "purposes which are not commercial" covers that. If you paid someone to do it for you, then surely they would be doing it for commercial purposes, and woud thus be infringing. Subsection 5(b) exempts acts done for research and does not include the "privately" bit. Sometimes it can be hard to fathom the subleties of parliamentary draughting, it seems to be designed to create work for lawyers.

David

Mark,

1. The search box on the home page is much more effective

2. A Patent discloses the design [which is why some firms don't use them] … anyone is free to build something to that design; but not to commercially exploit it.

Hope that helps

MichaelG.

Mark.

You can protect the design or concept without taking out a patent; a manufacturer would need to infringe that if doing so without permission. The designer or holder of the design copyright can elect to sell or license the design for someone else to make the product that incorporates the design feature.

In doing so, the copyright holder is required to notify the Intellectual Property Office [new name for the Patent Office] so that they are aware of the changed circumstances.

Design registration costs £60 initially for the first 5 years and is renewable for the next 5 years at roughly twice that cost, and thereafter in stages up to a maximum of 25 years.

Patent protection is a good deal more expensive.

Regards Brian

Edited By Brian Wood on 06/04/2013 15:46:52

Does it still apply that if a very big company pinches a patent, or registered design, the patent holder has to be very rich to do anything about it ?

More than 90% of all patents granted to home inventors prove in the end to be completely worthless .

My hero – Prof. Pat Pending

Neil

There is'nt such a thing as an "International patent" ..you have to apply in each individual country

To avoid this site becoming completely full of copies of my earlier posting :

(1) For ' a full international patent ' – substitute – ' full international patents ' with minor adjustment to rest of original sentence for grammar .

There are several International Conventions relating to patents that effectively mean that you can get International patent protection by making one application in one country and then replicating it in as many countries of the world as you want to – if you have lots of time and money to spare .

Doesn't alter the unfortunate fact that some newly developing industrialised countries and a few notorious old ones routinely ignore any patents originating outside their own borders .

(2) Design registration is a very different thing to Patent registration .

Design registration (and related drawing copyright ) only really gives protection as to what a product looks like . You have protection against someone making literal copies but not much against people taking the basic idea and doing a complete redesign . Also there is no requirement for or much protection of any inventive step in the product design .

Patents give protection as to the essential working principle of the product irrespective of what it looks like . Existance of an inventive step is nescessary and this is essentially the thing that is protected .

Many patents are easy to challenge technically as to the inventive step requirement – sadly many inventions can easily be shown to be obvious , done previously by someone else or just variants on something well known . Patents Office will sometimes cancel a patent after a technical challenge but this is not something that happens very often ..

Challenging patents commercially is a different matter and if a patent holder decides to stand his ground rather than negotiate then huge legal fees can rapidly accumulate .

One of the biggest single topics for patent applications prior to the electronicand bio sciences age was mousetraps – all ever more elaborate and sometimes very amusing but nevertheless they were just mousetraps .

Regards ,

Michael Williams .

It's interesting to see how quickly, and how far, this thread has departed from the original question posed by Mark C.

MichaelG.

A patent was originally a state-sanctioned monopoly on manufacture.

The modern system allows the originator of an idea to patent it, even if he hasn't got a clue how to bring it to market.

An example of this is how Savery's rather dodgy water pump gave him rights over Newcomen's atmospheric engine.

Not my argument, it's one advanced by H Stafford Hatfield in the late 30s.

Neil