Mar
28
What is a Provisional Patent Application?
Submitted by Warren Pate under Patents | Leave a Comment
In short, a provisional patent application is a placeholder. Provisional patent applications are never examined. They never issue as enforceable documents. Instead, they preserve for one (1) year your rights in whatever they disclose. With the filing of a provisional application, you are legally entitled to designate the corresponding invention as “Patent Pending.”
To preserve patent-pending status and pursue patent protection claiming priority (i.e., back in time) to a provisional patent application, the provisional patent application must be converted to a “non-provisional” patent application before the one year anniversary. If a provisional patent application expires without being converted, the rights it preserved cannot be extended. Depending on the facts of your situation, this may forfeit certain patent rights.
Jan
15
How Much Does a Patent Cost? (Part 1)
Submitted by Jack Pate under Patents | Leave a Comment
One of the first questions we typically receive from callers is “How much does a patent cost?” The true and correct answer is “It all depends.” We often say we can write a patent for any cost you want to name, so how much effort do you want us to put into it?
However, a better question is “What will my patent be worth?” We have seen patents worth millions of dollars. We have seen patents that are virtually worthless. So, start with this series of questions. 1) what is the commercially valuable result that users love about your invention? The answers may be health, beauty, success, time, safety, or any number of benefits, all of which are not patentable. However, they are important because they are the reason people buy. You must pay attention to them.
In a later blog entry, we will discuss details of questions 2) What structures deliver the result in 1 above? 3) Which structures are legally “new and non-obvious”? and 4) Which new structures control the market for delivery of the valuable, “improved” result your invention provides.
The answer to question 4 tells you what you must patent to have a valuable patent worth the cost to obtain it.
Send your questions or comments and we will try to address those as well.