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Non-US Citizen Patents in the United States
Many of the USPTO patent applications I do are for people living outside of the US. Why do people make that choice? Primarily because the US maybe the largest market for their products, the patent cost in the US may be lower (I charge $2200 for micro entity inventors and $2,800 for small entity inventors) and because the inventor can’t afford to apply for patents in a wide variety of countries. Many inventors also want to license their product, and the US in most cases has the largest number of potential licensees.
What about the heralded PCT patents covering multiple countries? The PCT patent gives you a priority date in the counties involved, but it does not give you a patent in those countries. You must apply for a patent in each country if you want broader patent protection. That process can run up a huge legal bill.
The patent laws of the United States make no discrimination with respect to the citizenship of the inventor. Any inventor, regardless of his or her citizenship may apply for a patent on the same basis as a US citizen.
In addition to being a large market, large US retailers such as Amazon and Walmart, have programs where an inventor can take an action about patent infringers selling to those retailers and after investigation the retailers may stop buying from them. I’m not sure if retailers in other countries have similar programs, but in the US it is becoming more common for retailers response to possible patent infringement by its vendors by cancelling purchases from that vendor
So should an inventor outside the US get a patent in the US? That’s a decision the inventor needs to make. Questions to ask yourself are:
- Is the US a target market for the product?
- Are most of the marketers of this product in the US? If you are trying to license your product, this is an important consideration.
- Do you have the funds to patent your product in multiple countries.
- Is your home country a large enough market for you to have financial success?