On filing patents (+ MIT TLO)
So why would you want to file a patent?
Imagine you’ve just come up with a new idea.
It’s a completely novel and innovative shape for chicken nuggets.
Forget the Bell, Bone, Boot, and Ball shapes created by the McCorporation. Your shape, Nugget Shape Supreme, a curly, winding, beautiful structure of a nugget, is entirely new and deeply beneficial to nugget consumers all over the world. You would want to protect that nugget shape idea so a competitor nugget aficionado doesn’t steal it, selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of your nuggets to the world.
“Ok,” you say. “I understand why I would want to protect my valuable intellectual property from the competition.”
“But can I really file my nugget shape as a patent? There’s no way” – you say incredulously.
Before losing hope, two things you should check are
- If the nugget shape is not MIT property
- If the nugget shape fulfills all 4 qualifications for being a patent
Your invention might be MIT property if it falls into any of these categories:
- The intellectual property was developed in the course of or pursuant to a sponsored research agreement with MIT
- The intellectual property was developed with significant use of funds or facilities administered by MIT
- All copyrights, including copyrighted software, will be owned by MIT when it is created as a “work for hire” as defined by copyright law.
Learn more here: TLO Intellectual Property Info
You look at these requirements and decide that although you did briefly do a UROP in food science, your nugget doesn’t count as MIT property because you came up with the idea after that UROP ended. You decide you might check with the TLO office to make sure.
The nugget shape fulfills all the qualifications for being a patent if it is:
- Statutory
- Eligible for patent. Has to be one of: “processes, machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter”
- New
- New unless your nugget shape was “patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention”
- Useful
- Must have a “useful” purpose.
- Non-obvious –
- Non-obvious unless if the differences between the claimed invention such that the “claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious”
“Hm,” you think. “My chicken nugget shape is definitely statutory, because it’s a composition of matter. It might be new, unless someone else came up with the same shape as my Nugget Shape Supreme first. It’s definitely useful, because now I can have a great, new way to eat chicken nuggets that will delight people. It also has this one part that works like a straw. It might also be non-obvious, unless the approvers think I could have somehow derived it from existing nugget shapes.”
“Ok, I’ll give it a shot” you say.
There are different places you can file patents, but MIT’s Technology Licensing Office is probably a good one, one reason being that there is the potential to get the backing of MIT’s brand and resources supporting your invention. If the McConglomerate itself knocks on your door claiming a copyright infringement, you could use the help of MIT to fight back.
File a patent at MIT’s Technology Licensing Office or request a public disclosure (you will need your kerberos account for this): Invention Disclosure Form
You should submit an Invention Disclosure Form to MIT before publishing your first paper, and you must file a patent within 12 months from the “first written public disclosure” (e.g. paper) of an invention. For example, after you publish “Nugget Shape Supreme: A Revolution in Sensorial Experience,” the clock ticks for patent filing.
That’s it for a short look at MIT patent policy! Look at the resources below for more information. Best of luck in innovation in your future, fowl-related or otherwise.
List of resources:
- https://tlo.mit.edu/
- https://tlo.mit.edu/learn-about-intellectual-property/mit-ip-policies
- https://tlo.mit.edu/learn-about-intellectual-property/conduct-your-own-patent-search
- Ninth Edition of the MPEP, Revision 08.2017