Can you patent a process?

[TJWEST]

What is the name of your state? ca

I want to go into business to deliver food to people staying in hotels. I noticed that a company that I would be competing with has a notice on their website stating that their "processes have patents pending." The process basically includes taking orders for food over the phone and delivering them to a hotel room. There is a bit more to it than that, like routing phone calls through a voice mail system, but not much else. Can a process be patented?

I have been to the US Patent Office website and searched for the company name, owners name, description, etc, and have come up with nothing at all. I also searched the company's copyrights and trademarks and I am able to find those. So I have a hunch they are lying about the patents.

I know I can go to a patent search company and have them search for me but since I didn't find anything, then Im not sure if I can trust the search company's result if they find nothing. Regardless, that will be my next step, I was just hoping to get some input first.

 

[divgradcurl]

I want to go into business to deliver food to people staying in hotels. I noticed that a company that I would be competing with has a notice on their website stating that their "processes have patents pending." The process basically includes taking orders for food over the phone and delivering them to a hotel room. There is a bit more to it than that, like routing phone calls through a voice mail system, but not much else. Can a process be patented?

This would most likely be a "business method" patent, and business methods are generally patentable, if they meet the requisite standards of usefullness, novelty and non-obviousness.

I have been to the US Patent Office website and searched for the company name, owners name, description, etc, and have come up with nothing at all. I also searched the company's copyrights and trademarks and I am able to find those. So I have a hunch they are lying about the patents.

Did you check just issued patents, or applications as well? Most patent applications are published 18 months after the application is filed -- however, if the application is only going to be patented in the U.S. (and since business method patents are generally only patentable in the U.S. anyway, this is probably a fair assumption), then it may not be published after 18 months, and you wouldn't know about the patent until it actually issued. Since it can take more than 3 years in many cases to obtain a patent, there could be patents in the works that have just not issued.

However, if you do have some evidence that they have not applied for patents, or that all of their applications have been rejected, yet they still refer to patents on their website, that is illegal. Check out 35 U.S.C. 292, http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/appxl_35_U_S_C_292.htm#usc35s292 -- you could sue them for false marking, the most you could hope to obtain is $250 (after the government gets their half!), so it might not be worth it!

I know I can go to a patent search company and have them search for me but since I didn't find anything, then Im not sure if I can trust the search company's result if they find nothing. Regardless, that will be my next step, I was just hoping to get some input first.

If there are published applications, a patent search firm might be able to find them -- but so could you, you can search published applications from the USPTO search page. Google also has a new patent searching tool, http://www.google.com/advanced_patent_search, but I don't believe it searches applications -- but it is faster and more user-friendly than the USPTO search engine.

There really isn't much a patent search firm could do for you in this case than you can do yourself. If there are patents in the application process, and they have not been published, there isn't any way you, or anyone else, can find out about them -- they will remain secret until either the application gets published, or the patent gets issued. There are no secret tricks -- everything else is confidential.