We're Different

Most of us are PhD qualified, all working from a small office, from home or at our clients' premises. Many of the patent agents we deal with also work from home. Lower overheads translate into lower costs for our clients. Working at a client's place of business also provides closer interaction with inventors, often leading to more patentable inventions.

We Are Intellectual Property Specialists

An Intellectual Property Specialist can work as part of your scientific or technical team to ensure that your inventions are properly protected in a timely manner. An Intellectual Property Specialist will, in close cooperation with your inventors, understand and express the full scope of your inventions in clear and appropriate language. An Intellectual Property Specialist may also work as part as a legal team, concentrating on prior art searches and infringement analyses. To ensure cost effectiveness throughout the patenting process, an Intellectual Property Specialist will help you to do as much work as possible in house, in order to minimise your expenditure on patent agents, and will also liaise with a patent agent on your behalf. This can be a patent agent or patent attorney working as part of your external counsel, an independent Canadian patent agent or US patent agent, or our own patent agents. As patenting activity can vary from occasional to full time, often with an uneven workload, it makes sense to hire an Intellectual Property Specialist as a contractor as and when needed.

How we work

Valuetech will work with you and, if desired, your patent agent or patent attorney to help you get a patent, and we will provide help at any stage of the patenting process. The first step is to define precisely what the invention is, and we will work in consultation with an inventor to prepare a disclosure document in which the invention is both clearly described and clearly differentiated from existing products. The next step is to determine whether the invention is really novel and has a good chance of being patentable, by comparing it with existing inventions in the same field. Valuetech will undertake and document a prior art study in which we will set out a comparison of your invention with what is already known. With an invention disclosure and prior art study, the next step is to prepare the claims and draft the patent application. We act as your scribe to set down an initial draft and then work with a patent agent who will finalise the text and the claims to complete the patent application. Once the application is filed, there are often further requirements to be met, such as responding to the patent examiner's questions. We will help you prepare the basis of technical arguments to ensure that your patent agent has enough quality information to make a strong response to the examiner. This phase may be repeated during the prosecution stage leading up to the grant of the patent. Contact us if you need help with your patents.

Technical Expertise

The Intellectual Property Specialists at Valuetech have experience in areas of medical devices, optical crystals, chemistry, polymer materials, alloys, holography, cryogenic devices, electronics, gas lasers, solid state lasers, 3D photography, 3D display, LED's, LCD's, systems including software, algorithms and mechanical devices.

Together, Valuetech and its team of experts have assisted in the filing of about 1200 patent applications.

IP Creation

We assist in brainstorming sessions and assign our own inventive ideas to our clients, further expanding their IP portfolios. We have assigned about 25 applications and/or patents to our clients.