Hi, I’m Doug Patt and this is the how to architect anything series part 5 filing a provisional pact application.
Let me first say that I am not a lawyer and what I’m going to discuss today is just from my personal experience. The bottom line, there is no perfect way to keep your idea from being stolen but you can create utilize your property around in order to protect the idea.
If it is stolen the first thing you wanted to do if you got a great idea and you’re thinking about going back to market is do a patentability search. This can be as easy as going on Google patents or the United States Patent and trademark office website. And simply type in keywords to make sure someone else didn’t patent your idea first.
That said I was once told that your patent ability searches only as good as the person doing it. That’s true I can tell you from experience that even though we’ve hired lawyers to do searching, they haven’t always come up with everything they should have.
Second, file a provisional patent application if you’re ready to start pursuing your idea in earnest and want to protect it. I hired someone a few years ago to do this for me and it cost about $1500.00. Now I write and file my own that cost just about $110.00 plus the time it takes to put it together. I should say however that you’ve got to be a decent writer. You got to be able to follow directions well and you should be good at documentation if it’s your first few times you’ll also need some guidance.
I recommend John Ferrell’s patent Pro Se. It’s an excellent resource that I still turn to. These provisional applications are never reviewed by the USPTL. But they’re more of a place holder for your idea. I should say however that if there is ever a lawsuit, the provisional application will come in handy. So it’s important it’s done well.
If everything is in order you’ll eventually received notification from the federal government that it’s been received. Provisional patent applications are a great way to protect your idea, state your claim and get rolling for one year if you truly plan on filing a non-provision application once the 12 months have elapsed.
One big benefit of filing the provision application is that you can use the phrase patent handy in association with your product. Now filing a non-provision application is a whole different story. That’s the application that leads to a patent. It’s way more complex and you’ll need lawyers help to file.
You can also get pretty expensive depending on the patent content. So use provisional patent applications to protect your idea and talk to a good lawyer once you’re far enough a law and ready to file for your first patent. We’ll see you next time.
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