Patent disclosure - what counts as publication before you file
Lesson 2 of 6 · What you cannot paste
1 · Learn the move · Specific task + easy yes
What counts as a public disclosure before a patent filing is a legal question with jurisdictional teeth - grace periods differ by country, and some countries have none. A model may not answer it for you, and this course will not either. What the model can do is something narrower and genuinely useful: turn your messy situation into a precise, complete question list for the people whose job this is - your technology transfer office. The specific task is the whole technique: not "is this a disclosure" but "draft the six questions my TTO needs answered, with the facts they will ask me for attached to each." You walk in with a one-page brief instead of a story, the meeting takes twenty minutes, and the answer you leave with is one you can rely on.
I have a possible pre-filing disclosure situation. Do not assess whether anything is a disclosure - that is my TTO's call. Task: from my facts below, draft (1) a dated timeline of every event where the work was shown, sent, or described outside the lab, (2) the specific questions my TTO needs to answer, each with the facts they will need attached, (3) a list of facts I have not given you that they will ask for, marked [NEEDS: ...]. Facts: [events, dates, audiences, what was shown]
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
Three weeks ago your PI presented two slides of your unpublished compound data at a departmental retreat with visitors from two companies present. A provisional filing is planned for next quarter. You do not know if the retreat counts as a disclosure, and neither does your PI. Write a prompt that produces the brief for the TTO meeting instead of a guess.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.