Your Patent Clock Is Ticking: 3 Activities That Trigger Patent-Filing Deadlines
Public disclosure, sale or offer to sell trigger a 12-month window.
By Steve Sponseller •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If your business develops inventions to maintain its industry leadership, you need to understand critical deadlines that may prevent you from protecting those inventions.
Three important activities automatically trigger a 12-month deadline in the United States for filing a patent application to protect your invention. In most situations, if you miss this deadline, you forfeit the ability to protect the invention. This means your competitors can freely use that invention in their products because you can't protect it with a patent.
Continue reading this article — and all of our other premium content with Entrepreneur+
For just $5, get access to a ton of exclusive content and resources that will help grow your entrepreneurial mindset. You’ll find:
- Exclusive content from our network of today’s leading CEOs and business strategists
- Receive our flagship Entrepreneur Magazine - free!
- No more ads, and get access to the Entrepreneur+ homepage
- Free E-books written by our staff and other industry thought leaders
