A provisional application for patent is the most cost effective way to begin protecting your invention. It establishes your priority to the patent rights for your invention while you put the finishing touches on it, work up your non-provisional patent application, seek funding and do market research. With a provisional application on file, you can…
One way to prevent the provisional from expiring is to continuously have a provisional one file (just updated to the latest version of your back-end). If you let the provisional expire (and your back-end isn’t receiving a lot of press), you are back to square one. For the provisional to save you the risk of…
Yes, because it will ensure that any patent rights to the subject matter of your application are reserved for you, the first-filer. This provides you a chance to trump someone who is attempting to claim those patent rights. In this way, we address the problem before the competitor is issued a patent. The fees to…
A USPTO provisional patent application simply secures your ‘spot in line’ or patent priority date to a later patent application filing. After you file a provisional application, you will have one-year to follow with a non-provisional (full) patent application to maintain the patent priority date secured by the non-provisional. It’s important to secure your patent priority date since the…
If you’re trying to write a patent application on your own,please take caution – it has been my experience that almost all of the inventors who attempt to prepare and file their own application end up never obtaining any patent rights and inadvertently forfeiting their invention to the public domain. Use this guide as an outline of…
In the US, provisional patent applications are kept as confidential documents, away from public availability. There is no publically accessible database in which you can search or verify provisional patent filings. This is to protect and preserve your rights while your product is still in the beta/development phase. It also allows you to let the…
I usually get asked the question: If I rush to convert my provisional to a non-provisional patent filing, does that reduce the risk of someone having a third party receiving a patent on the same subject matter? Typically, there is NO rush in filing the non-provisional utility patent application once you’ve already secured a provisional…
A provisional patent application filing receipt indicates that the USPTO has granted you a patent priority date. The patent priority date is the same day as your patent filing date in the case of a provisional patent application filing. From this date forward, you have 12 months to file a non-provisional patent application claiming priority…
A provisional patent application is a 12-month place-holder for a utility patent. The USPTO allows you to label your invention as Patent-Pending during this 12 month period. If a utility patent is not filed within the 12-month period, your spot in line is lost! Once the utility patent is filed, your utility patent filing claims…
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