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From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Patents
Message-ID: <25871@cup.portal.com>
Date: 13 Jan 90 04:52:56 GMT
References: <1311@corpane.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 22

You don't need to build a working model, unless requested by the Patent
Office.  (Here I'm assuming you haven't designed a perpetual motion machine.)
You must show "reduction to practice", which could be a model but could also
be "conservative reduction to practice" (i.e. a paper design).  The latter
requires that the design is detailed enough to allow someone "skilled in the
art" to understand and use it.  (Quoted phrases are important legal terms.)

You should immediately commit it to paper and have it properly witnessed,
because proof of early invention is important to obtaining a U.S. patent.
Unlike most countries, the U.S. is not a "first to file" nation.

Your collection of sensors and a computer running customized software seems
like a patentable apparatus to me.

The next step would be to do a patent search.  There are a couple dozen
places around the U.S. where patent collections are available to the
public.  They're listed on the inside cover of a magazine called the
OFFICIAL GAZETTE, which you can find at any large university library.
The magazine is published by the Patent Office, and has abstracts from
all newly-issued patents.  You can almost do a patent search in a large
collection of the Official Gazette, but it's much better to go to a
patent library.  They will be able to tell you how to do the search.