How To Patent Your idea

How To Patent Your idea is not as hard as you think. It is just much more expensive than you thought.

With that in mind I want to introduce you to the Provisional Patent Application process that costs a mere $125 as of Sept 26, 2011 to file.

At issue is HOW do I file a provisional patent application, PPA, myself, or at least inexpensively and WHY would I do that if a non-provisional patent application, sometimes called a “real” patent is what all the lawyers tell me I need to use.

The reason attorneys want you to file a non-provisional patent application is because they charge from $5.000 to $50,000 to file one for you. They earn these fees MAINLY answering what is known as “Office Actions”. Office Actions are what you get when the USPTO sends you a letter telling you made a mistake in your patent application submission. Mistakes such as silly spelling errors to obvious errors in legal structure down to obvious errors in claim structure. This is much like a math teacher would do when you make an error on your trigonometry homework. The math teacher uses the well known laws of mathematics and trigonometry to inform you of your errors and it is your job to return the homework with the corrected answers. You, the student SHOULD HAVE KNOWN not to make errors. It is OK, however, because you are new to the “business” of trigonometry.

The same is true with the USPTO to the attorney who files your patent application. The difference is the laws pertaining to the proper authoring of patents is published in the Federal Register and are available to ANYONE with an internet connection. You must know that patent attorneys go to school and pass a rigorous examination to have the honor of charging you $400/hour or so to file a patent for you.

And, you would assume with all this schooling these same attorneys would NOT make simple errors that are causal to income producing Office Actions. The fact of the matter is that there is not much income to be gained if one were to submit a “perfect” patent application. As such you can appreciate why attorneys are not “motivated” to ensure there are no errors in their submissions.

Back to How To Patent Your idea… Or, why use the Provisional Patent Application process that you can do yourself for $125 even when your good friend the Patent Attorney tells you that you should hire him to file a non-provisional patent application for you….

Simple answer… A provisional patent application can be filed online quickly and when you hit the “Submit” button you IMMEDIATELY get a confirmation and a registration number that allows you to affix “Patent Pending” to your invention and affords you a level of protection that allows you to share your idea with prospective partners or investors so that within the one year time frame you can have your partners come up with the money needed to file your non-provisional patent application. In a way a Provisional Patent Application is a “cheap” insurance policy to “protect” your inventive idea while you get your ducks in a row to bring your invention to market. After no real or serious company would ever want to talk to you about your invention if you do NOT at least have a Provisional Patent Application filed giving you the “Patent Pending” status. And, if you were to go to the expense of filing a non-provisional patent you would likely be “wasting money” as most serious companies who engage individual inventors prefer to have their OWN Intellectual Property team draft all their patents anyway.

How To Patent Your idea again… My simple answer is FIRST file a Provisional Patent Application using something like the Provisional Patent Video Course.. And do it NOW before some other clown comes along and copies your idea… The course is IDEAL for individual inventors who want to file themselves as well as inventors wanting to use the service of a good, honest, reputable, patent attorney who realizes that when they help someone file a provisional patent application for a fair and reasonable price that it is highly likely that they will come back within a year to file the associated non-provisional application!

A cautionary video about Invention Companies… Watch the video… This demonstrates why you should FIRST file your provisional patent application and DO NOT give ANYONE money till you FIRST file!