Our Difference

Most of us are PhD qualified, all working from a small office, from home or at our clients' premises. Many our associate patent agents we deal with also work from home. Lower overheads translate into lower costs for our clients. Working at a client's place of business also provides closer interaction with inventors, often leading to more patentable inventions.

Patent Agents & Patent Specialists

A patent agent can work as part of your scientific or technical team to ensure that your inventions are properly protected in a timely manner. A patent agent will, in close cooperation with your inventors, understand and express the full scope of your inventions in clear and appropriate language. A patent agent may also work as part as a legal team, concentrating on prior art searches and infringement analyses. To ensure cost effectiveness throughout the patenting process, a patent specialist may help you to do as much work as possible in house, in order to minimize your expenditure on patent agents, and will also liaise with a patent agent on your behalf. This can be one of our own patent agents or a patent agent or patent attorney working as part of your external counsel, and it could be a Canadian patent agent or US patent agent. As patenting activity can vary from occasional to full time, often with an uneven workload, it makes sense to hire a patent specialist as a contractor as and when needed.

How we work

Valuetech's patent agents and patent specialists will work with you and, if desired, your in-house patent agent or patent attorney to help you get a patent, and we will provide help at any stage of the patenting process. The first step is to define precisely what the invention is, and we will work in consultation with an inventor to prepare a disclosure document in which the invention is both clearly described and clearly differentiated from existing products. The next step is to determine whether the invention is really novel and has a good chance of being patentable, by comparing it with existing inventions in the same field. Valuetech will undertake and document a prior art study in which we will set out a comparison of your invention with what is already known. With an invention disclosure and prior art study, the next step is to prepare the claims and draft the patent application. We act as your scribe to set down an initial draft and then work to finalize the text and the claims to complete the patent application. Once the application is filed, there are often further requirements to be met, such as responding to the patent examiner's questions. We will help you prepare the basis of technical arguments to ensure that we have enough quality information to make a strong response to the examiner. This phase may be repeated during the prosecution stage leading up to the grant of the patent. Contact us if you need help with your patents.

Technical Expertise

The patent agents and patent specialists at Valuetech have experience in areas of medical devices, optical crystals, chemistry, polymer materials, alloys, holography, cryogenic devices, electronics, gas lasers, solid state lasers, 3D photography, 3D display, LED's, LCD's, systems including software, algorithms and mechanical devices. For more information, see some of our example claims.

Together, Valuetech and its team of experts have assisted in the filing of about 1400 patent applications.

Success Rate

We are sometimes asked what our success rate is in getting patents granted. The question is really what our success rate is for those applications that are not prematurely abandoned, and remain with us until the final determination is made. Out of all the patent applications we file, about a quarter of them are abandoned early by the applicant, before a decision is made as to whether they are patentable or not. To name a few, the reasons for this include failing to make the product, deciding not to bring the product to market, taking the product off the market, finding a better solution, deciding to keep the invention a trade secret, depleting the budget, disagreement with business partners, and unfortunately, death of the applicant. For the remaining applications that we see through to the end, our success rate is 97%. For some applicants, even with numerous patents, the figure is 100%. For the few that are not granted, one reason for refusal is a competing patent application that was filed in a patent office before the applicant's filing, but was not public at the time due to it being within 18 months of its filing date. Another reason is prior art that was published at the time of filing, but was not seen by the applicant, which can happen if an application is filed without a search being done beforehand, or if a search is incomplete. Another reason is a change in the law or its interpretation, which, for example, takes what was a patent-eligible application out of the realm of eligibility.

IP Creation

We assist in brainstorming sessions and assign our own inventive ideas to our clients, further expanding their IP portfolios. We have assigned about 25 applications and/or patents to our clients.