A PCB prototype is unnecessary to have a patent, but it may have value. If you work in secret, and you feel you have the time, building a prototype can trigger a better patent. It will help you find what the original concept is, it minimizes ideas that seemed good at the time but did not work, and it educates you on additional embodiments and the design-around. This knowledge can help create a patent which is more clear, more comprehensive, and harder to infringe upon.
However few people have the richness of making a LED PCB prototype initially. If you want to widely share or even pre-sell your innovation so that you can get financing for the prototype, you will need to patent it before the prototype is created. Or simply you believe that a competitor is in close proximity to submitting their own patent, therefore you need to beat them. In cases like this, you will need to give details the idea as best as you can, and submit supplementary patent applications later on to protect what you didn’t know yet. The good news is, your patent application is usually a top secret for the first 18 months, which means you have that precious time to finalized your prototype on PCB Fabrication and submit supplementary applications before others can see your concept.
A prototype will give you a very important factor into understanding when your PCB is actually valuable and marketable. Patenting is a strategy which may not be needed when your prototype isn’t successful or not a satisfactory solution for whatever issue you are attempting to solve.
That’s not to say that you should not have a patent. When the prototype of your LED PCB Assembly is unbeaten and unique in either concept or design, then you must protect it. I do think it’s fair to insist that there are a lot of positive aspects to beginning with a prototype, but there might be exceptions or even other factors that need some legal advice.
If you are interested, you need to contact a patent attorney. An attorney will help you determine at which stage you must start the patent process or in case of your product is qualified to apply for it . Stay in communication when you’d like a consultation.
If you carry out a quick patent search, you will even find that there are patents have been made for LED PCB in past times. And, certainly, the owners of the patents will surely have anticipation of licensing those patents. The concern is, are those patents legitimate? Is it possible for you to patent an LED PCB Assembly? Probably not, for a patent to be justifiable, a concept should be both new and not totally obvious to anyone skilled in the design. Any specific patent may be invalidated by showing previous art or that the concept is clear to someone skilled in the design.
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