FAQs Patent Questions

Question:Can the USPTO assist me in the developing and marketing of my patent?

Answer:
No. The Office cannot act or advise concerning the business transactions or arrangements that are involved in the development and marketing of an invention. The Office, however, will publish for a fee, at the request of a patent owner, a notice in the Official Gazette that the patent is available for licensing or sale. In addition, the Office of Independent Inventor Programs (OIIP) was established in March 1999 in order to meet the special needs of independent inventors.

Question:Does your USPTO database include data on the current fee status and expiration of patents?

Answer:
No, the US Patent Full Text Database does not include this data, but it is available on the PTO Web site. Use the link to the Patent Application Information Retrieval database (PAIR) on the Web database main page.

Question:The patent law specifies that its subject matter must be useful, meaning it is able to perform its intended purpose.

Answer:
The patent law specifies that the subject matter must be “useful.” The term “useful” in this connection refers to the condition that the subject matter has a useful purpose and also includes operativeness, that is, a machine which will not operate to perform the intended purpose would not be called useful, and therefore would not be granted a patent.

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