What's the difference between a US patent and a foreign patent?
When you apply for a Patent you're given a Patent in America, and that Patent protects your rights here in the U.S., in addition, to protecting an importer from knocking your product off and entering it. And what's unique about inventors, is that, if you have a really unique product and you start selling it in mass production cycle. Meaning, you're selling it all over America. There is a guarantee that somebody oversees will see the marketability and see what you're charging and he'll flood the marketplace with an import. A U.S. Patent protects you from that, as long as you are doing a research and you'll see the knock-offs, and you have to figure out who made it, who shipped it, and then, you hear about these custom's seizings. You know, they'll seize boatload's of product and saying this is a blatant knock-off of a protected product in America. You don't hear too many of those stories, but occasionally you hear one make it to the surface. A U.S. Patent protects you here in America. A foreign Patent is very time consuming and costly to obtain, because you have to now, have Patent protection overseas. So, you need to actually take the same Patent process, and then you need to apply, rather than, each one of the foreign countries, you can get what they call is a "general, foreign, application Patent So that covers you for the European communities. It does not cover you for Latin America. It does not cover you in Russia. So, what you need to do is, get a foreign for Europe, and then you need to get another Patent over in the Asian countries. And by the time you spend all of this time and money, by then your product's morphed a couple of times or it might have shifted, the consumer's not interested. Or a better product has come to market to compete wih yours. So I tell people, as long as you have a U.S. patent, and you can get to market first, get a foreign Patent but it's not imperative, and it's time consuming and expensive.
