S
People take out patent applications for various product designs all the time – one route is though an International Application (through WIPO under the Patent Cooperation Treaty). This will involve a search and ultimately a Patent Application Publication (WO prefix). There is no ‘World’ patent so the next stage is to go through an advanced search in the country (in my case GB) where you want the final patent published, this is where you may need to do modifications etc to get it accepted as truly novel/new. So far, so good. It is at this stage you may wish to go no further – due to costs, design practicality issues etc. The question is how would you find out that the inventor does not intend to take it any further? Is there a timescale where it just falls by the wayside? I can search for published patents as one check (only indicates the positive, not the negative event), so is there a listing (or indication somewhere) for published applications which are abandoned or do they just sit there? Any other way of finding out? Will a Patent always be 'Pending' if just an Application?
Steve
Steve
to your preferred qualified patent attorney and get an authoritative answer. I believe it's worth the fortune...