We have the pleasure of having an administrator for a regional patent pro bono program speak
with us today.
Hello, my name is Bob Pimm, and I'm the Director of Legal services for the California lawyers
for the arts.
We're the administrator for the California inventor's assistance program.
Please tell us your experience as an administrator and how do you help the local inventor community?
For the California inventors assistance program what we do is we screen clients who come forward
to us who are independent inventors or small business.
So who can qualify for the pro bono program?
This is a very important questions because many people who hear about pro bono services,
naturally want to apply to the program.
But it isn't really suitable for every kind of independent inventor.
The most important thing to understand is that itis really a program designed for people
of very limited means, and so the starting point is the federal poverty guidelines for
an individual.
For this program, the USPTO decided to take the federal poverty guideline, the current
guideline, and multiply it by three hundred percent and then add four thousand dollars
per individual in the household.
But that's just the starting point.
Certainly, for a Californian inventor's assistance program we look at a lot more than and then
just that simple formula, and other regional programs to also look at more things than
that as well.
What should an inventor do before applying to the program?
One thing inventors might want to do is take a look at the resources available on the USPTO's
website before they begin the application process.
There's a lot of resources there -- there is information about the fees, and they can get a lot of
information, and their expectations can be better set and understood about the process.
If they take a look at those resources that are there before they begin the process.
Another thing they can do is contact one of the regional programs and ask questions before
they even start the process of doing the application because the regional programs are there to
answer questions even before they start the application.
So that might be a good thing to do.