The essential introduction to patents for startup founders, CEOs, CTOs, entrepreneurs, or any non-lawyer who needs a quick education about patents and their value to a company.
The 30 Minute Patent MBA is not intended for lawyers. It is for business leaders, technologists, and/or entrepreneurs working in early stage startups to midsize businesses—basically any company that does not have a dedicated Intellectual Property (IP) staff and a multi-million dollar IP budget.
This short primer on patents will—quickly, and in plain English—teach you:

• Why you should bother with patents
• What exactly is a patent
• How you know if you have a patentable idea
• How you obtain a patent (step by step)
• How long it takes to obtain a patent
• And much more

You know your company offers a competitive advantage. It’s why you’re in business. But do you know if it’s patentable?
This short eBook can help.

There are many reasons patent programs fall short of expectations, or never even start. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Read this free eBook for best practices to help you build a sustainable patent program that not only protects your technology, but also aligns with your company’s business objectives.

There may be several reasons why you’re not patenting your company’s technology. It’s too expensive. You don’t have the time. You don’t know if your technology is patentable. TurboPatent can help.
Instead of pushing patents down the to-do list and leaving your technology vulnerable to competitors, learn about the new way to patent that renders most common objections null and void.
Get your copy of this free eBook to debunk commonly-held objections and to find out how new patent services that rely on technology can eliminate these objections.

Provisional Patent Applications: Use and Abuse is the completion of a four-book series on the topic of quality in patents and patent portfolios. This book describes a provisional patent application (PPA), shows how it differs from an ordinary non-provisional application (NPA), and explains how it can provide an early priority date for later applications and patents. There are few formal requirements for a PPA, which can be good in that it gives freedom to explain an invention in the inventor’s own words, but can also be bad in that the application often fails to explain the invention clearly and comprehensively. Critically important is that the PPA present and define the “key claim terms” (KCTs) that will later be used in the claims of an ordinary patent application and a resulting patent. If a PPA defines these terms and explains the invention well, it is a “good” application. If it does not, then it is a “bad application.” The book includes four chapters. First, a discussion of the provisional application generally, including its advantages and disadvantages relative to a non-provisional application. Second, four specific cases of very good PPAs, which create a model against which other PPAs may be judged. Each case includes an introduction, a statement of what happened, and a summary in the form of Lessons Learned from that case. Third, nine cases of bad PPAs, in which all legal protection is lost, or in which the PPA fails to provide an early priority date for later applications and patents. Fourth, a summary of the major lessons in the book, organized by strategy, quality, and drafting of provisional applications.

Provisional Patent Applications: Use and Abuse is intended to help patent professionals and inventors draft provisional applications clearly and broadly, thereby providing the early priority dates necessary to protect inventions. It is intended also for corporate and IP executives, as well as engineers, who are not actively involved in the drafting process but who want to understand how to make best use of the provisional format.

True Patent Value answers the questions, “What is a high-quality patent?”, and “What is a valuable patent?” Specific patents are shown to be good or bad, resulting in patent sales for millions of dollars, court decisions for hundreds of millions of dollars, or in some cases, complete loss. The book includes three main sections: First, a review of basic patent concepts, and of techniques used by professional evaluators to review and rate patent quality. Second, twenty case studies of more than fifty patents. This section also includes an analysis of the patent portfolios of three high-tech companies, reviewed by quality, by geographic balance, and by balance over time. Each case study or portfolio analysis concludes with a short and pointed list of “Lessons Learned”. Third, a summary in an easy-to-understand Question & Answer format organized by main topic, followed by a Glossary of more than eighty terms used in patent analysis. True Patent Value is intended for four groups of readers: (1) Entrepreneurs and engineers who until now had no way of judging how good their patents are; (2) Patent attorneys and agents looking for a concentration of live cases where specific drafting created (or failed to create) valuable patents; (3) Corporate executives, corporate Board members, and patent brokers, contemplating the purchase or sale of patent portfolios; (4) Investment advisors, equity analysts, and investment bankers working with high-tech companies, who need to understand whether a patent portfolio truly adds value.

Litigation-Proof Patents: Avoiding the Most Common Patent Mistakes explains the principles of excellent patents, presents the ten most common errors in patents, and details a step-by-step method for avoiding these common errors. Specific patents are analyzed and shown to commit or avoid the most common patent mistakes. The book includes four chapters. First, a step-by-step process for writing outstanding patents that capture all the innovative points of an invention and that avoid the most common patent mistakes. Second, principles of litigation-proof patents, including characteristics of good patent claims, Key Claim Terms, patent value, seminal patents, and tips for writing patent applications. Third, the ten most common mistakes that appear frequently in patents, and that destroy both patent quality and patent value. Fourth, five patents that illustrate the concept of “litigation-proof patents”. These patents include the Hedy Lamarr frequency hopping patent from World War II, the patents for the board game Monopoly®, and the “slide-to-unlock” mobile phone patent that Apple asserted against Samsung. Litigation-Proof Patents: Avoiding the Most Common Patent Mistakes is intended for anyone writing a patent who wants to achieve the highest-possible quality. It is intended for patent evaluators who want to understand whether or not the patents being reviewed suffer from value-destroying mistakes. It is intended for patent managers and heads of IP departments who are managing significant patent portfolios, and who want to understand the relative quality of their portfolios.