As part of their normal course of activity, DataPlex staff can help develop a client's intellectual property by documenting their trade secrets and developing patent drafts for patent attorneys.  After working with the patent attorneys to fine-tune the patent applications, DataPlex staff assist at various times during the patent examination process.  Since the same DataPlex engineering team develops the products and the patents, companies and inventors save time and money over other processes that split the technical and legal efforts.

Why worry about intellectual property?  Primarily because it has become a necessary component of any successful high-technology business.  Companies that discount it find themselves quickly weakened by competition and less able to protect their products.

Companies that develop technology are surprised to learn about the maze of complexity involving domestic United States and foreign/international patents.  Recently, in Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc.¹, the Supreme Court issued an important decision concerning the so-called "on-sale bar" doctrine of U.S. patent law.

The patent laws of many countries follow the rule of "absolute novelty," which prohibits patent protection if the invention is made public in some way before the patent application is filed.  The United States, unlike many other countries, in Section 102(b) of the U.S. Patent Act (35 U.S.C. Section 102(b)) provides a one-year grace period following certain "statutory bar" events to permit an inventor to file a patent application.  In the U.S., if an invention is patented or described in a printed publication, or in public use or on sale for more than one year before the filing of the patent application, patent protection is barred.  For this reason, companies and individual inventors are often careful to file a patent application within one year of the first date an invention is offered for sale.

If a company or individual inventor wishes to secure foreign patent protection as well, as is often recommended for high-tech inventions, it is necessary to file patent applications in advance of any public disclosure.  As the invention may not yet be "reduced to practice," often a provisional patent application is filing, enabling the inventors to come back within one year and file a more complete patent application for consideration by both U.S. and foreign patent authorities.  Since some countries observe the Patent Cooperation Treaty while others do not, it is crucial that inventors, for maximum protection, include intellectual property as a key project development step.  Otherwise, in spite of their passionate hard work to get a new product to market, they may find it copied with wild abandon.

	co-development of engineering design and intellectual property
	balance efforts between design, production, and patent development issues
	consults on technical aspects of intellectual property protection
	assisting with registered trademark categorization and descriptions
	writing patent drafts, composing drawings, and reviewing patent applications
	due diligence and feasibility determination of existing intellectual property
	recommendations of capable intellectual property law firms
	update of intellectual property through development and production