Now back to the “How-part”; How to document an inventive idea.
Say that you got a brilliant idea that you believe is novel and inventive. Now you need to describe the idea which is done in an invention disclosure or an invention disclosure report. An invention disclosure, or invention disclosure report, is a confidential document written by a scientist or engineer for use by a company’s patent department, or by an external patent attorney, to determine whether patent protection should be sought (or not) for the described invention.
The invention disclosure typically follows the structure of a regular patent application and should include
- Background, prior art
What is the background of the problem? It should also include the closest known (by the inventor) technique (prior art), i.e. how the problem was solved before (if there was any solution at all….)
- Problem with prior art (complex solution, expensive, high power consumption etc. etc.)
- Short summary, core essence of the invention
In some few words, what is the invention about
- Advantages with the invention
Advantages using the proposed invention over prior art
- Detailed description
As it sounds, technical details for enabling the invention
- Drawings
In the next few updates, I will reveal how to write the invention disclosure in an efficient way. Hang on ….!