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Buying a Bar Date from Your Prototype Vendor

By Guillermo E. Baeza and Monica B. Lateef

Your client has an invention. He tells you he came up with the invention 18 months ago and that he hasn't offered the invention for sale and hasn't publicly disclosed it. He's meeting with you today because he has evaluated his prototype and finally decided to direct financial resources toward obtaining a patent. He asks you to prepare a patent application. Everything seems fine, right? Maybe not. A bar date might have been purchased along with the prototype.

Inventors who are unable to manufacture their own products often turn to a manufacturer to fabricate the invention. In many cases, the inventor purchases one or more prototypes of his invention from the manufacturer. Engaging in such a transaction, however, can trigger a bar date under '102(b). The inventor-purchaser is precluded from obtaining a patent if he fails to file an application for patent within 1 year of the engagement (or within a year of the underlying offer to buy the prototype). See Special Devices, Inc. v. OEQ, Inc., 270 F.3d 1353, 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2001). The on-sale clock begins to run the moment a manufacturer offers to sell or sells to the inventor the product embodying his invention. If his invention is ready for patenting, how does an inventor who outsources the manufacturing of his invention avoid the on-sale bar?

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