Step 1
Schedule a free consultation with Kaufhold & Dix. This is your opportunity to discuss your ideas with us so that we can learn about your needs and goals. With this information, we can provide you the best advice possible to get you and your ideas where you want them to be. While you do not need prototypes or drawings that are manufacturer ready, anything you can provide which explains or demonstrates your idea will be helpful.
Step 2
If after speaking with us you determine that protection is worth pursuing, we will usually, though not always, suggest performance of a prior art search and legal opinion. During this process, our professional searcher will do a worldwide patent prior art search to determine whether or not your idea is new. When performing the search, the searcher typically locates between ten and fifteen of the closest prior art references publicly available. These references are then provided to the attorney who reviews the references and drafts a legal opinion letter discussing whether or not your idea is potentially patentable. This legal opinion letter, and the references are then given to you for your review.
Step 3
Should you be provided with a positive patentability opinion and you decide to proceed with a patent application, the attorney will use your information to have drawings prepared by our professional drafter. Once the drawings are ready, and usually pre-approved by you, the attorney will write the application. The application and drawings are then sent to you for your review, approval, and necessary signatures prior to filing the application. At filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office you will be patent pending and can freely market your invention for the purpose of manufacturing, selling or licensing your idea without fear of another taking your idea.
Step 4
Once filed, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will examine your application for patentability. This process can be very time consuming and the USPTO’s first response is usually 12 to 24 months after your filing. These responses are called office actions and we can typically expect one to three office actions during the examination process. Because our firm has complete flat fee service, we will handle these actions without billing you and will prosecute your application until the first of a final rejection or an allowance. If you do receive a final rejection, depending on the circumstances, there are usually additional options for you to keep moving your application forward in the hopes of achieving an allowance. Once allowed, the government issue fee is paid by you and a patent is issued to you which gives you the right to prevent others from copying your patented invention.
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If you need help with a patent or a trademark, please choose one of those options instead, and we’d be happy to help you.
While our firm could help you with a copyright, we feel that most people can file for their own protection as the US Copyright office is fairly easy to navigate, the copyright Examiners are helpful, and the cost is very low if you do this yourself. If you still need assistance, especially if you have a fairly large project requiring multiple copyrights, we encourage you to search specifically for a “copyright attorney” as our firm specializes in trademarks and patents.
In order to obtain a license or attract an investor, it is imperative that you create a property right for your idea. If you have an invention, but are not patent pending, you are likely to not have a property right that can be licensed or invested in. We, like all patent attorneys, do not find investors or licensees, but 1) we do make certain that you are protected when dealing with those entities, and 2) we likely have referrals to assist you in moving your product from the drafting board to the store shelf.
If you need to protect your idea, please instead choose “I want to protect my invention with a Patent”.
We are not a litigation firm but a prosecution firm. That is, we help people obtain patents and trademarks but we do not litigate infringements. We do, however, routinely send out cease and desist letters for our clients as well as communicate with online retailers, such as Amazon, to have infringing products removed from their sites.
If you require analysis of an infringement claim or need assistance with cease and desist letters, please call 605-334-1571 and request to speak with one of our attorneys.
If you are already patent pending because you have filed a provisional application and wish to file a non-provisional patent application, we can assist you by professionally amending and filing your non-provisional patent application. Please note, we typically charge full fees for the rewriting of an application prepared by a non-attorney or AI as such applications nearly always include flaws which undermine the possible protections available to the inventor.
If you need a non-provisional application, please select “I want to protect my invention with a Patent”, otherwise call our office at 605-334-1571.
We are an intellectual property boutique firm specializing in obtaining patents and trademarks for our clients, as well as performing patentability searches, analyzing infringement concerns, sending cease and desist letters, preparing licensing agreements, and assisting with other intellectual property needs.
If your needs are outside of the above, we invite you to call our office at 605-334-1571 to determine if we can assist you.