Orthopaedic Innovation: From Inspiration to the OR (2021 Annual Meeting)-Orthopaedic Innovation: From Inspiration to the OR-Gitler

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The speaker outlines a practical roadmap for protecting inventions, with emphasis on medical devices and software. First, keep ideas confidential: use NDAs before discussing them, because public disclosure can destroy patent rights in many “absolute novelty” countries (the U.S. has limited grace periods). A patent is a right to exclude others, not a right to practice the invention; you can hold an improvement patent yet still infringe a broader earlier patent, often resolved through cross-licensing. He reviews patent types (design, plant, utility) and core requirements: novelty, utility, and especially non-obviousness, which examiners may challenge by combining multiple prior references. Inventors should search prior art using free tools (USPTO, Espacenet, Google Patents) before hiring an attorney for deeper classification-based searches. He explains costs, claim importance, provisionals (one-year “holding” filings), and international protection via the PCT. Finally, he summarizes shifting software patent law: if a method can be done with pen and paper, it may be deemed an unpatentable abstract idea (e.g., ride-sharing route optimization).

Asset Caption

Stewart Gitler

Keywords

patent protection roadmap

confidentiality and NDAs

prior art search (USPTO, Espacenet, Google Patents)

non-obviousness requirement and examiner rejections

provisional patent application and PCT international filing

software patent eligibility and abstract idea doctrine