A fundamental decision in our intellectual property strategy development is whether to file a patent application, or whether to keep the details of an invention a trade secret?
A patent gives a property right to the holder, but unlike in the case of real property, the claims are not defined by simple physical stakes in the ground. The language of the patent and the claim in particular must precisely define if the invention is to have commercial value.
The USPTO offers some help in this regard. Read on to find out what you need to do in order to extract the most commercial value from your patent.