The Patent Process From Start to Finish

Samar Shah 0:00 Hello, and welcome to the patent pending made simple podcast. I'm your host, Samir Shah. And on the line with me is Jamie Brophy, Jamie, how are you?

Jamie Brophy 0:07 Hi, good summer. How are you?

Samar Shah 0:10 I am doing all right. I am you know, I say this every week that I'm excited about this episode. But I think this one is going to be hopefully very helpful to folks who are listening our own clients. I mean, I think we do a pretty good job of explaining the patent process to our clients. But even they are sometimes confused as to Hey, like, why is this happening? Or, you know, I wasn't expecting this or something like that. And so I am glad to be able to clear the air once and for all and hopefully orient the listeners about about what the whole process is from start to finish.

Jamie Brophy 0:42 Yeah, definitely, I think we are going to be giving a lot of good information in this episode.

Samar Shah 0:47 Okay, so why don't we start with the provisional application, you know, typically, you don't have to start there. But it is technically the first application that you get theoretically filed, some folks will skip the provisional process and go straight to the non provisional, we have a lot of clients who do that, but we have some clients who will also want to file the provisional first for good reason. And some of which I think we've talked about or we will talk about in one of the episodes, but why don't we start there? Can you walk us through what the provisional is and what the deadlines for it look like? And then we'll go from there.

Jamie Brophy 1:18 Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I know, we've talked about it in in other episodes, but the provisional is basically just a placeholder for your filing date, it can be a more informal application, your patent examiner is never really going to look at your provisional unless they have some questions about which subject matter is entitled to that filing date. So it can be a super informal application, sometimes, we have clients that are in a hurry, and we just take the information they give us that which can be like photos, PowerPoint slides, whatever they give us.

And, we might add some stuff to it, and then file that as the provisional. So yeah, it's kind of a quick, cheap application to hold the filing date. If we have time, we would prefer to put it in proper form, and add all the things that we need to add and get it as close to non provisional status as possible. But it can be can be quick, it's cheap to file, if you're not sure, if you want to go through the whole patent process, if you're still trying to make that determination, the provisional application is a great option, you get to hold your filing date. And then that gives you a year to make that determination of whether you want to go through the cost and the time and blood sweat and tears of moving forward with your full blown patent application.

Samar Shah 2:37 Yep, and the cost. I mean, the provisional is usually a lot cheaper than the non provisional. So there is that benefit as well. The other benefit is that it doesn't count towards your patent term. So as some of the listeners might might be familiar, utility patents are good for 20 years from your filing date, but it is 20 years from your non provisional filing date. So a provisional will essentially give you an extra year of patent pending, without the penalty of reducing the time that the patent is in effect or in force. So that's the other benefit that we have. And in fact, there are some industries, you know, the pharmaceutical industry, for example, will always file a provisional application, because each year that the patent is in effect, or in force is worth a lot of dollars, right?

I used to do this litigation for a client, we were doing pharmaceutical litigation, fighting off generics in the marketplace. And our litigation team was billing the client, something like $120,000 a day, and I always in my back of my head wondered, Is this a lot of money to defend this lawsuit or to initiate this lawsuit? And the answer was no, right? They were making millions of dollars a day on that drug suspending 100 A day was totally fine for the client. So in those cases, that extra year, the patent term is very important and very helpful and potentially very lucrative.

Jamie Brophy 4:00 Yeah, wow, that's amazing. And I think for independent inventors, the other side of the spectrum from your client that has no problem spending 100k a day, a lot of times, they're still looking for funding, or they're still in the process of inventing, or they're looking for manufacturers. They're doing marketability studies, you know, things like that. And that provisional gives them that extra time to do things like that.

Samar Shah 4:26 Yeah, that's a really good point. The other piece that people should be aware of, and this is regardless of whether you file a provisional or nonprovisional is the statutory bar dates. So if you make a public disclosure about your invention, you have one year from that date to file either a provisional or nonprovisional. And then there's the on sale bar date, at least here in the US where you have one year from the date that you sell the product to file a provisional or nonprovisional so usually, any kind of disclosure or sale is going to kick off the schedule to file things and often for independent inventors. I think it makes a ton of sense. So as it does for pharmaceutical companies to file that provisional within the one year date, and then the rest of the schedule will follow that I'm sure we'll discuss here.

Jamie Brophy 5:09 Yeah, I would say the majority of our clients start with a provisional application. And I think it's a good idea.

Samar Shah 5:16 Yep, I agree. Okay, so you filed a provisional what happens next, Jamie.

Jamie Brophy 5:23 So within one year of filing the provisional, you'll have to decide whether you want to proceed with a non provisional and or an international application, what we call a PCT application that when your provisional expires in 12 months, and once it expires, it's gone, there's no extensions available, there's nothing you can do. So on that one year anniversary, you want to make sure that you file something if you want to proceed, and that sometimes it's both a non provisional application and an international application, or it can be one or the other. So you'll have to make that determination within that year.

Samar Shah 6:02 That's right, there is the other option to foreign file directly into another country. And this really is for advanced listeners. So this is not something we do very often. In fact, I've only done this a couple of times in my entire career. But let's say you know, for sure you need patents and protection in Mexico or the UK, and you want to file in those countries directly, you would have to do that filing within one year of your provisional date, if you want to preserve your priority date. Alternatively, you can file the PCT which has the same effect as filing in that country. But whatever that filing is going to be it has to be within one year of your provisional date.

Jamie Brophy 6:43 Correct? Yeah, that one year, that 12 month timeframe is super important. So then I would say most of our clients go from the provisional application to the non provisional application. And with the non provisional, there's more more we have to add to it, we need to make sure need to draft claims. A lot of the times, if we didn't draft them with the provisional, we need to draft the claims with the nonprovisional, we need to make sure that the application is in the correct format, that we have disclosed everything we need to disclose to support the claims. So there's some extra things we have to do to file the nonprovisional.

Samar Shah 7:19 Yeah, that's a really good point. All of that preparation work does take us and we'll take your patent practitioner quite a bit of time to put together not provisionals are much more tedious and a lot more work than a provisional application. Jamie, I know we like to tell our clients that hey, give us at least 10 weeks of notice, if you want to turn your provisional into a non provisional, any less time than that, we're going to be struggling to get that done in time and under the deadline. Would you tell clients about that? How much lead time should you have, you know, can you just contact your attorney the day before the deadline and say, Hey, file the non provisional.

Jamie Brophy 7:52 I mean, you can but your non provisional won't be great. I think 10 weeks is a good rule of thumb, for us to be able to prepare a quality application, if you're up against the deadline. And you know, for whatever reason, you had to wait till the 11th hour to make that decision, you can just kind of convert the provisional to a nonprovisional, it might not be great quality, but that is an option. And then later on, after your patent practitioner has had time to work on the application, and get it in good shape and make sure that everything is in there that needs to be in there, you can file a continuation based on that. And then that middle application, that application that you first converted from the provisional to the non provisional, would eventually just be abandon and you would pursue the continuation application. That's an option. We don't prefer to do it that way. But that is an option.

Samar Shah 8:47 Yep. In what is something that the listeners should keep in mind about priority? I mean, what if they're adding new material to the non provisional application? Will they still be able to claim priority to their provisional? That's the whole point of the provisional right is to be able to save that date as the date of invention. But what happens to the new stuff that you add?

Jamie Brophy 9:07 Correct? Yeah, that's a great point. So anything new that you add, that new extra material does not get the benefit of the earlier filing date. So let's say in the provisional application, you had disclosed a product that you invented. And this product includes features a, b, c, and d. And in that 12 month timeframe, you decided that your product also needed to include feature E. So we would include feature E and your non provisional along with ABC and but feature II would not get the benefit of that earlier filing date. So that just means if your examiner if your patent examiner finds a reference that is in between those two filing dates, it could be used against that feature II because feature II is not entitled to the earlier filing date. I hope I said that clearly enough.

Samar Shah 9:57 Yeah, no, this is really good. The other option, and I am reluctant to even bring this up, but I am sure we're going to have some listeners who really want the advanced strategy discussion. In fact, I've never done this in my career at all. And I don't recommend anyone ever do this. But there are some mechanism, if you miss that 12 month date, at least in the US, you can file that non provisional later and then file a petition to restore your abandoned provisional application. I haven't seen any court cases about whether that's permissible or will stand up in court, if that strategy will stand up in court. But if you have no other options, you could theoretically file your non provisional, and then file a petition to restore your provisional application, even if it's after the 12 month date. And I can't remember if it's two months or three months before that strategy also goes away. But if you really need to get there somehow, um, that might be an option might be a very risky option. And our option that I don't don't ever recommend, but but it is there as a potential strategy.

Jamie Brophy 10:58 Hmm, yeah, I didn't realize that I've never had to do that. And I didn't realize that that was an option. It seems like it'd be super risky.

Samar Shah 11:06 Yeah, I've never done it either. And I hope to never have to do it. But I have heard of some people going that route, and at least on the face of the patent, it will restore your priority whenever the patent issues, but I have very low confidence. And actually, it's standing up in court, if it ever gets gets to litigation. Yeah. Okay, so I think we've done a good job here of going through the first two stages. So we have the provisional, within 12 months of that provisional, you need to file your international and or domestic non provisional patent applications. If you have a design patent Jamie, does that also have to be done in that 12 month period?

Jamie Brophy 11:46 So the design application can't claim priority to a provisional. So yeah, this discussion kind of excludes design applications for design application. A provisional is not an option, a design application can claim priority to a utility application. But I don't even know if I've ever done that either. So yeah, the design application is a separate thing.

Samar Shah 12:11 Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you have design patents, or even a PCT or an international patent application, I think it would behoove you to get your filings done at least a month in advance of your 12 month deadline, just because it allows your attorney to clean up some priority issues without endangering your ability to get a patent in the first place. For many PCT applications, for example, I like to file the US application first. And then the next day filed a PCT application, it helps a lot, especially in Downstream European patents, sometimes they won't let you claim priority to the US non provisional application if they're both filed on the same day.

So, you know, you'd want to file these things a little little ahead of the deadline so that you can kind of have the right priority in the structure for all these things. Same with design patents, right, you want to file potentially the non provisional, a month in advance if your deadline so that if you need to file a design application, you can do so before the 12 month date from your provisional application. So maybe that sounds very confusing. But if you have design patents and or international applications, get them filed early, there's no reason to wait till the 12th hour to get that done.

Jamie Brophy 13:26 Yeah, that's a great point. It's like I said before your provisional expires on that 12 months anniversary of the filing date. So your non provisional would need to be filed no later than that day. But yeah, I would agree with that. Preferably early.

Samar Shah 13:42 Yep. Okay, so we've talked about provisional and non provisional is PCT international applications to design applications. You filed the non provisional application here in the US what happens next, Jaime?

Jamie Brophy 13:55 Well, after a few years, probably you would probably get a rejection. Most I would say 90 95% of applications get rejected. And that's kind of a normal part of the patent prosecution experience. You would get a rejection from the patent office. And then you have an opportunity to amend the claims, or clean up any informalities in the application that the examiner objects to and or make arguments to try to get around the rejection. So now we're in the prosecution stage of the application where we've heard from the patent office, we've gotten a rejection, we have to respond to that rejection. So yeah, I would say that's the next thing that happens. Do you have anything to add to that summer?

Samar Shah 14:40 Yeah, I would say that rejection happens 18 to 24 months after your patent filing date with the exception of accelerated filings. There are a few different ways you can accelerate the prosecution process. There is what's called a track one application there you just pay an extra fee to the patent office and they will put you in the front of the line so to speak, and you'll tip typically get your first rejection in anywhere from four to five months as my experience they say could be up to a year. But it's pretty quick.

There is an acceleration based on a few different demographic factors. So if the inventors are over a certain age threshold, you can accelerate your your timeline for free, there is the AEP, the accelerated examination process, which I've only done once or twice, which actually, I don't even know if it's available that allows you to accelerate your filing.

Basically, with that process the AEP, you have to do your own prior search and write up a report to the patent office as to why your invention is patentable over the references. I don't like doing that, because I don't like to make statements on the record about the prior art voluntarily. Plus, I think the cost for that too, if you hire an attorney to do it, your attorney is going to charge you more than probably the track one costs. So I don't love that option. But there are some options for you to accelerate it. If you really need a patent as as quickly as possible. You could get to this prosecution stage faster, or your rejection faster by accelerating it.

Jamie Brophy 16:04 Yeah, correct. Yeah, we've done some of those track one filings. And they're pretty quick.

Samar Shah 16:09 Yeah, very quick. I also like doing the track when filing when we have a pretty good likelihood of getting the patent allowed. It's a great way to get to a patent issue once in four or five months. Ideally, we've had several of those applications, Jamie, and it's incredible. I mean, you file a patent, and four or five months later, you have an issued patent that's worth a lot potentially in the marketplace.

Jamie Brophy 16:31 Yeah, definitely. If budget allows, I think it's a great a great way to go.

Samar Shah 16:37 Okay, very good. So you're in the prosecution stage. Now, here in the US you've gotten rejected is a normal part of the patent process. So don't be alarmed, it doesn't mean that your application is fatally flawed, you'll never be able to get a patent is just part of the game or a dance that happens with the patent office. So what happens next, Jamie, what would you tell folks after they've been rejected?

Jamie Brophy 17:01 So we would go through the rejection, and we would provide some recommendations to our client for moving forward with the application, you do have an opportunity to respond. And like I said, amend the claims, make arguments, do whatever you need to do. And this process can go on, you know, we can go through a few rounds of rejections and responses. So the first rejection you get will be a what's called a non final office action. And we would respond to that. And then the next communication we get from the patent office may be a Notice of Allowance. It may be a final rejection. I mean, I think those are the two most common things when you get a final rejection.

Technically, prosecution is closed at that stage. And you can't really make amendments to the applicate to the claims, you can make arguments that hopefully the examiner will find persuasive, but typically not. Or you can file a request for continued examination, which kind of reopens the prosecution, and you can then amend the claims. So this process can go back and forth a few times a rejection or respond to rejection or response. I think the typical is like, what do you think summer? I think it's three to four office actions from the patent office until the application is either abandoned or allowed. Is that kind of what you think is the normal three to four office actions?

Samar Shah 18:23 Yeah, I think so. You know, I haven't done this analysis and all the art units but in the software space, three to four is very normal. So it is a process and a back and forth that happens with the patent office different examiner's also have different allowance rates. If you have analytics tools that help you figure this out, it's helpful to know how many times on average, your examiner likes to reject applications, I find that to be very helpful, because then we can be conservative in our argumentation, or more aggressive in our argumentation beyond just the the merits of the case. So that helps it helps you negotiate with the patent examiner sometimes.

So I think those analytics are helpful and nice. But primarily, you'll have to make a decision based on the merits of the rejection and the merits of the references as to what strategy you need to take to proceed. And give me I think you did a good job. There's the final and non final office actions and will often recommend clients to file a response with non final office actions. We'll usually also have a call with the patent examiner and we'll try to talk to them and see if we're on the same page. Or if there's some fundamental disagreement then we can try to identify it on the phone as opposed to in the written back and forth and then with the final will we have several options will file sometimes it's called an AF CP and after final I don't know what it stands for is a pilot program of some sort. Do you have

Jamie Brophy 19:41 to after after final consideration can pilot program Yeah,

Samar Shah 19:45 okay. There's the there's a FCP, there's the pre appeal brief. There's the RCE. All those I think are viable options depending on on what you're dealing with. So talk to your attorney at this point. Hopefully they've already made recommendations to you about About you can proceed.

Jamie Brophy 20:02 Yeah, and great point about knowing some additional information about your examiner, you know, your patent examiner that you get is just kind of a luck of the draw situation. And you can't change examiner's I've had clients asked me that before too. Once that examiner picks up that case that is their case they don't doesn't normally get passed on to another examiner. So if you know that you have an examiner, that's just really tough and doesn't like to allow applications, sometimes the best strategy is just to appeal the rejection.

Once your application has been rejected twice, you have the option to appeal. And then you know that would go to the board, the board of appeals, and they would make a decision on whether they agree with the examiner or whether they agree with your arguments. So sometimes, you know, unfortunately, just luck of the draw, you get a tough examiner and you need to go through that extra expense of appealing the rejection. Sometimes you get a very reasonable examiner and like you mentioned somewhere we we get on the phone with them, and they give us the information we need. And they're agreeable. And we can come to some kind of agreement but some examiner's are just tough.

Samar Shah 21:14 Right? I mean, they have an interpretation that is really hard to reconcile with the patent that you have or the references that you see that makes it very difficult to come to a mutually acceptable place if you can't even agree on the starting point. So to me, that's usually a tough examiner. And easier or more reasonable examiner is somebody where at least you can have a common starting ground, right. But your interpretation may take you in different places. That's something that's easier to work with just like anything else in life.

I think the argumentation process is both art and science, you want to one stand up for your rights and present your point of view. But also there's some give and take that happens, right? The examiners are usually coming from a different perspective, or a different plane of view. That's how I like to think about it. And we're coming from a different perspective and a different plane of view. And, you know, whenever I see a rejection, I'm always trying to find ways to reconcile these two planes or get on the same plane, either us moving our plane of view or having the examiner move their plane of view. I think it's important to recognize those things and see if you can work towards a common ground.

Jamie Brophy 22:28 Yeah, definitely. And figuring out where the examiner is coming from and really understanding why they're rejecting it and really trying to understand their point of view is, is important, and it helps move the case along. And that's why it's often very helpful to get on the phone with them and and discuss the rejection. And a lot of times after discussing the rejection with the examiner, I'll think oh, okay, now I get it. Now I get where they're coming from now I get where we need to go to move this thing forward.

Samar Shah 22:58 Yeah. Jamie, I think you do a good job on that. I always tell Junior attorneys, especially at our firm, that when you talk to an examiner, there is a tendency to just go through all the stuff where you think they're wrong, and point them out and try to win the case. But I would strongly encourage you to not do that. Right? I think the best thing that you can do when you get on a call with them is to listen, right? And don't argue try to really understand what they're saying and see if you can reconcile that somehow, with what's in your head. I think it's often not very fruitful to argue with the examiner. Certainly are different strategies here. But I think the best thing that you can do is listen to the examiner. Yes,

Jamie Brophy 23:42 I think that is a great point. Because like I said earlier, you are stuck with that examiner, so you do not want to piss them off.

Samar Shah 23:51 Yep, yeah, I've been on those calls, or sat in on those calls where the attorney will just kind of blast the examiner and throw the book at them, so to speak, and talk about legal cases and opinions from the Federal Circuit or the Supreme Court as to why that examiner is wrong. I just don't think that's particularly helpful for inventors who are listening to the show. I also don't think it's helpful for you to watch a tirade against the examiner not only is it going to be unhelpful to you from just having a good relationship with your examiner, but it also usually doesn't move people or gets people to change their mind. I don't think so listening and trying to understand what they're saying is, I think a big goal or job of that examiner interview.

Jamie Brophy 24:33 Yeah, definitely. So I think that covers the prosecution of the application is the rejections the appeal, like all of that stuff that you need to go through to get the case, what we call disposed of. Do you think we've covered everything during prosecution summer?

Samar Shah 24:50 Yes. The one thing I'll add is that the prosecution you know, responding to rejections is usually your attorney or your patent agent is going to charge you for Responding to a rejection or bill you for that time or that effort. I mean, theoretically, maybe somebody has a pricing model out there that will, you know, you pay one fee, and it covers all their response and appeals process. But I don't know of many pricing models out there like that. So usually, when you get a rejection, you should also in your head, be prepared for some additional costs to prosecute and respond to that rejection. I think that sometimes catches clients off guard, you know, sometimes clients think, Oh, well, I paid money for filing an application, why do I have to pay more money for getting it allowed. But that's just the process at the patent office. And that's the most standard kind of billing or pricing model that I've seen.

Jamie Brophy 25:40 Yeah, that's a good point. So you need to budget not only for getting the application drafted and filed, but then you're going to need to budget some extra to cover this prosecution part of the application. And then once the prosecution's done, you need to budget some more money for paying your allowance fees, issue fees, and maintenance fees, you know, at the end of the prosecution, the application is disposed of, which means it's either abandoned, or it's allowed, hopefully allowed, but sometimes, you know, it just ends up that it's just not worth pursuing. But once you get that Notice of Allowance, you'll need to pay your issue fee. And then and then pay maintenance fees down the line after that.

Samar Shah 26:22 Yes, and just so listeners have an idea, I think what you paid your attorney, your agent to file the pan application, you should budget an equal amount for the prosecution process. You know, we as a firm, I think we tend to do pretty good, we usually get our pencil out before you get to your second rejection on average. So our clients save quite a bit of money in that prosecution process. But it is something that you should budget for, for the prosecution phase. And like you said, Jamie, for the maintenance phase of it as well. The one last thing that I'll cover quickly is the international process, right? We talked about filing that PCT or the international application.

What happens after that, and the process goes something like this, once you file your PCT application, you have 18 months or 30 months from that PCT the international filing date, to file what's called a national phase entry application. And before I get there, usually when you file a PCT application, or the international application, they will submit a written opinion, usually in five to six months telling you what they think about whether your invention or claims are patentable or not, you can go through a prosecution process with the International examining body, you can amend the claims or you can try to argue your case to see if they will write you a better or more favorable written opinion. But that opinion is not binding to most countries, right. But it is something that most countries will look at pretty closely. It's because usually the examining body does a good job in reviewing the claims and the references. So you have that many process that happens at the PCT or at the international body.

From there, like I said, you have 18 to 30 months to file your national phase entry application. The national phase is when you take your PCT application, and you try to file it in all the countries that you want protection in including the US if you haven't filed a US application previously. So you can go to the EPO, the European Patent Office or the Mexican patent office or the Canadian patent office and say, Hey, I'm trying to get a patent issued, I'm going to claim priority to my PCT application, and my PCT application is going to claim priority to my provisional application potentially, and, and then you go through the prosecution stage at each of these countries separately. So this is where things can get pretty complex and pretty expensive. But each country may have its own rules for getting patents allowed. So you may get rejections from those countries based on those legal rules.

Typically, you'll have to have foreign counsel in those countries to prosecute your application. But you will have to budget for those costs as well. And then at the end of it, you will get a patent in each country that you have a national phase entry in. And then often you'll have maintenance fees after that. So it's basically the same process that happens in the US, but it just happens in other countries simultaneously, often.

Jamie Brophy 29:15 Right, so that process gets quite expensive, quite costly. Some are for our independent inventors that are more budget conscious. What do you suggest for them as far as international filing, I think we've mentioned before in other episodes that your US Patent gives you protection from anybody importing anything into the US, but it doesn't give you protection in other countries. If somebody is going to make use or sell your invention in other countries, you would have no protection in those in those other countries. So what do you suggest for independent inventors for filing internationally?

Samar Shah 29:54 Yeah, not just for the independent inventors but even our large corporate clients are not going to file internationally. because it's so expensive even for them. And often, you know, for large or small clients, the largest and the most lucrative market is going to be the US, typically, you'll see the most amount of sales, the most amount of potential profits in the US. And also we have the most favorable legal system has, well, you know, we have a jury system here in the US. So damages awards, if somebody's going to try to infringe on your patent, our damages awards tend to be pretty high. In other countries, you usually have a judge who's presiding over the proceedings, and they have very limited rules or damages rules about how much you can get for somebody infringing on your patent.

So not only is the US the biggest market, from a financial perspective, it is also the biggest from an infringement fee extraction perspective. So the US is kind of where you need to be for the most part, if there is a specific reason for you to be in a different country. I always tell clients to file the PCT application, the International application, if you want to be in more than four countries as kind of the how the math works out. If you need to be in another country, and you need to just be in one other foreign country, then you should directly file in that country within the 12 month date. But yeah, I would think long and hard about whether you need international filings, it gets very expensive. And if there is a need to be in a foreign country. I like the PCT route because it allows you to kick the can down the road, another 18 months. So you can figure out, Hey, how's the market shaking out? Is it worth it for you to do a national phase entry and so on and so forth? But yeah, it's it's something that most of our clients, large or small are not going to want to do. And for good reason.

Jamie Brophy 31:37 Right. Great. Yeah, I think that's, that's great advice. Um, so I think that's our episode about the patent process start to finish. I think we pretty much covered everything. What do you think summer?

Samar Shah 31:51 Yeah, I think so. Hopefully, this will give everyone an overview of what to expect. And you know, if you're pro se at the patent office, when some of these things come at you hopefully won't be a surprise. Or if you're working with a patent attorney or an agent when they email you things. Hopefully things are not a surprise. So I'm hopeful this has been helpful.

Jamie Brophy 32:10 Yeah, definitely. Okay. Thanks, summer.

Samar Shah 32:13 Alright. Thanks, Jamie.

Thank you for joining us on the patent pending made simple podcast. I hope you enjoyed our show. If you'd like to receive updates, view the show notes or access a direct link to any resource. Go to the episodes page on patent pending made simple.com. To help others find our podcast. Please Like, Share and Subscribe. Thanks again for tuning in. I look forward to having you with us next time on patent pending Made Simple. This podcast has been hosted by outlier patent attorneys and is not intended to nor does it create the attorney client privilege between our hosts, guests or any listener for any reason. The content of this podcast should not be interpreted as legal advice. All thoughts and opinions expressed herein are only those from which they came