Don’t Let Your Idea Become Public Domain!
The US patent law requires inventors to file a patent application for their inventions within a certain amount of time of certain events. These events trigger deadlines called “bar dates.” In the United States, inventors have one year from the date of first public disclosure, public use, publication, sale or offer for sale of an invention, in which to file at least a provisional patent application. Failure to do so prohibits (or forever bars, hence the term “bar date”) the inventor from filing a patent application for that invention. In other words, if an inventor does any one of these things on December 1, 2010, then the inventor must file at least a provisional patent application by December 1, 2011, or the inventor has essentially donated his or her invention to the public domain.
Most foreign countries have an even stricter standard – inventors cannot have disclosed their invention at all prior to filing a patent application.
STOP READING right now if you have done anything which might be considered to have triggered a bar date, and talk to a patent attorney right away to discuss your particular situation.