Software invention disclosure example

If you are using Internet Explorer IE , you may experience difficulties and might find better success with Chrome or Firefox. If you have already completed your Invention Disclosure Form and would like to check on it or any of your other technologies, you can login to Innovate through the link below. Filing an Invention Disclosure Form What is an invention disclosure?

When is the right time to file an invention disclosure? Upon reaching the Invention Disclosure Form, you will find the following fields: Invention Title — The title should generally explain what the invention does for a non-technical audience. Note on international contributors: Please consider honestly and to the best of your knowledge, the status and nationality of the contributors.

In the case of grants or contracts, please include its number and source agency. What happens after I file my IDF form? These include: Always try to provide a list of companies in the potential partners section, as well as contextual information about the disclosures listed. This can help our fellows team better understand your space, gather information, and provide a thorough prior art search report. Specify the maturity stage of the project whenever possible.

Specifically: is the project an idea, a proof of concept, a reduction to practice implementation, an early or later stage experiment or development, a prototype, a fully-fledged or proven technology, etc.

When describing the invention, try to specify how you conceived it being adopted by licensees. Do you expect it to be a product, service, process, or other? For example, will your invention be a drug intended for a treatment, software intended to run on a specific system, etc. This helps licensing managers and fellows understand your technology. Provide as much supporting information as you can provide that is relevant to the filed invention when filing.

This includes unpublished manuscripts, research plans, internal presentation slides, technical descriptions of the technology, etc. Last minute provisional patent application filings may especially require this content. Despite the tip above, please do not just refer to the Supporting Documentation attachments in the Description field e.

This clarity can help our team better structure Inter-Institutional Agreements and take international law precautions. This is especially true for inventions with multiple co-Inventors, or IDFs that include students, or non-Duke collaborators. Always list all funding sources. Even if the project was funded using internal resources over grants, understanding how the project was financed is still needed from the office. This may take up to a week after your submission.

Chrome and Firefox are our preferred browsers. For more details, I invite you to watch this minute snippet from an in-house inventor training event:.

I'm Bastian Best, a European patent attorney who helps companies make sense of patents in the digital transformation. View all posts by Bastian Best. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. But the devil is in the details. What is the industry standard until now and which are the problems you encountered in the known solutions?

What is the principle behind your solution to solve these problems? How does the invention solve these problems on a conceptual layer? Why is this better than the known approaches? Why is the solution uncommon or surprising? The concrete realization s In the invention disclosure the concrete realization needs to be disclosed, too: How can the invention be put into practice?

Possible workarounds: How could it be put into practice? One complete walkthrough As a patent attorney I love to have one complete walkthrough of the preferred realization of the invention with concrete data, specific examples for inputs, outputs and intermediate results. What are the technical use cases? The invention hierarchy The concrete technical realization is important and based on the recurring question: How do you put your invention into practice?

So keep in mind this short checklist of the aspects that should be stated clearly in the invention disclosure: What are the known features you are using which are necessary for the invention to work? The next half serves to capture feedback from the manager and IP counsel on the invention. Idea number is a unique tracking identifier for each idea submitted in the portfolio. The purpose is to make sure that ideas have their own unique code or identifier.

This number may be determined by other software systems our the docketing system. The purpose of the title is to briefly describe the invention. This field captures the contact information of all associated inventors to facilitate further communication. The inventor need not be a current user of the TIP tool.

Adding their email address will give them access to the idea. Every enterprise has its structure. The inventors have busy schedules, and patent protection might not be their priority. To ensure that the potential inventions receive patent protection, the managers need to push them forward. Any user of the TIP tool can be given manager rights by another manager or administrator.

The summary field captures a brief description of the idea to help the manager or prosecutor understand the invention. The summary can include:. Additionally, The TIP innovation management software allows attaching documents such as patent drafts, detailed working, and invention drawings. This field helps the managers and IP counsels to rate the idea between 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

It is a subjective value to the enterprise of a patent on a particular idea. The enterprise can assess the value of the invention based on its:.