High Flash can substantially reduce the costs of your search by notifying you should we find prior art which significantly impacts your invention. We tell you as soon as we find it.

If the High Flash discovery is made in the proposal phase you may save 75% of the patent search cost.

If the HighFlash is made in the search phase you can assign the remaining search dollars to searching another invention which may be more likely to pass examination by the patent office. One customer searched four inventions for the price of one search that way.

Identification of High Flash™ Patents

High Flash patents may be identified at any stage of the BML patent reading process: Proposal, Profile, Relevance Read or Detail Read. There are different procedures to be followed in each of the four stages
High Flash patents are those patents which in the view of the reader impact directly the phantom claims of the inventor in one of two ways. Either they:

1. Directly impact a particular claim by teaching the same material as the claim and thereby impacting patentability of that material; or they
2. Limit the scope of the phantom claims, thus preventing the inventor from enlarging the scope of his/her claims beyond the limits imposed by the HighFlash patent.

It doesn’t matter if the HighFlash element is in the specification (body) of the patent where Patentability is the issue or in the claims where Freedom to Use is impacted. Our job is to inform the inventor. It is up to the inventor and their attorney or agent to decide how to proceed.

Notification of Customers

When a BML patent reader encounters material that he or she believes to fit the HighFlash category there are several steps that will be taken.

1. BML will send a HighFlash notice to the customer. The memo will include identification of the patent and location of the High Flash content in the patent.
2. The report should will include a PDF copy of the patent.
3. The patent will be marked 1-HighFlash in the Read/Status field of the Patent Search database.

4. Except as described below, there are no charges for HighFlash, it is a free service of BML.

Modification of Claims

The discovery of a High Flash may cause the customer to revise the phantom claims to take the prior art into account. It is solely the responsibility of the customer to decide upon these changes although BML may make recommendations.

If Customer makes no changes to claims:

If the customer chooses not to make changes and a claim is blocked by the HighFlash, BML will concentrate its search efforts on those claims that are not impacted by the HighFlash. If all claims are impacted, BML will conclude the search and write the final report.

If Customer Adjusts claims:

When the customer adjusts the claims, BML will continue with the search at whatever stage it currently is taking those changes into account. BML will NOT increase the search scope to cover the claim revisions without charging an additional fee.

BML will inform the customer about what that additional fee would be. If the customer decides not to pay the fee, the same policy will be followed as if the claims had not been adjusted.

Effects of High Flash™ on Prices and Payments

The effect of High Flash on customer payments depends on the stage of the process at which the High Flash is uncovered.