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So that's a big shock to a lot of inventors that their own patent that's granted can be used against them. So there's nothing even a registered patent attorney like myself—if an inventor has a self filed patent that becomes published or granted as a patent, I cannot file anything for them without that being cited against them as prior art. So that puts a huge burden on them to overcome their own invention. And they come and they feel like, “Wait a minute, it's unfair. How can you reject me over my own idea?” But that's what the law is. It's a prior art. And even though it's your own idea, it can be used against you.
What a lot of people don't realize is that when the patents are put into the database, at the USPTO, they're not put in with any kind of details about the inventor, all right? It is based solely on the topic and the idea. So, when they go back in and look for a product that has already had a patent filed on it, and it was yours, they don't really care that it was yours. All they care about is that it's out there, and it's part of the public domain and no, they're not going to let you file an improvement on it, if you're outside of the proper time frame.