Patent questions, answered plainly

A provisional application typically runs $2,500–$4,500 in attorney fees. A full utility application runs $7,000–$14,000. On top of attorney fees you'll pay USPTO fees that vary by entity size, plus the cost of responding to office actions during examination.

All-in, from filing to issue, a typical utility patent totals $12,000–$25,000 — but spread over two to four years, which makes it far more manageable than the number suggests. Full fee breakdown here.

Two to four years is normal for a utility patent. Your application sits in a queue for roughly twelve to eighteen months before an examiner picks it up, then goes through one to three rounds of office actions and responses.

Design patents are faster — often twelve to twenty months. Track One prioritized examination can compress a utility case to about a year for an extra USPTO fee, which is worth it when a funding round or a competitor makes speed matter.

A utility patent lasts 20 years from the earliest non-provisional filing date, as long as maintenance fees are paid at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after issue. Miss one and the patent expires permanently.

A design patent lasts 15 years from issue with no maintenance fees. If the USPTO caused certain delays during examination, you may receive patent term adjustment that extends the term.

A utility patent can cover a process, machine, article of manufacture, composition of matter, or an improvement to any of them. The invention must be:

• Novel — not already disclosed publicly anywhere in the world
• Useful — a low bar; it needs a real-world purpose
• Non-obvious — not an obvious combination of what already exists to someone skilled in the field

Non-obviousness is where most applications live or die. It's also the most subjective of the three, which is why arguing it well matters so much.

Some things are categorically excluded:

• Abstract ideas, laws of nature, and natural phenomena on their own
• Mathematical formulas standing alone
• A mere idea, with no description of how to make and use it
• Inventions publicly disclosed or on sale more than a year ago (U.S.)
• Purely artistic or literary works — those are copyright territory
• Brand names and logos — those are trademark territory

"I have a great idea for an app" is not yet patentable. "Here is the specific technical architecture that makes it work" may well be.

Yes — but how it's framed determines whether it survives. Software claimed as an abstract idea implemented on a generic computer gets rejected under Alice. Software claimed as a specific technical improvement to how a computer or system operates fares much better.

The practical difference is usually in the drafting. We spend real time identifying the concrete technical problem your software solves and the specific mechanism by which it solves it, because that framing is what carries the application through examination.

They protect completely different things, and many products need more than one:

• Patent — the invention: how it works, or how it looks
• Trademark — the brand: names, logos, and identifiers that tell customers who made it
• Copyright — creative expression: writing, music, images, and software source code

A single product might have a utility patent on the mechanism, a design patent on the housing, a trademark on the name, and a copyright on the manual.

A provisional secures a filing date and patent pending status. It's never examined and never becomes a patent on its own. It expires in twelve months, by which point you must file a non-provisional to keep the priority date.

A non-provisional utility application is the real thing — examined, and capable of issuing as a patent.

Provisional first when the design is still changing, cash is tight, or you need patent pending status for a conversation next month. Straight to non-provisional when the invention is settled and you want the clock running. One warning: a provisional only gives priority to what it actually describes, so a three-page rush job can create false confidence that costs you a year later.

You're legally allowed to file your own. Some people do it successfully. But two failure modes come up constantly in self-filed applications, and both are permanent:

• Claims drafted so narrowly that a competitor designs around them in an afternoon — you get a patent that protects nothing commercially useful.
• A specification that doesn't adequately describe the invention. You cannot add new material after filing. Whatever was left out stays out.

At minimum, have a registered practitioner review a self-drafted application before it goes in. That's much cheaper than fixing it, and often fixing it isn't possible.

No. U.S. law requires that you describe the invention well enough that someone skilled in the field could make and use it — not that you've built it. That said, prototyping tends to surface the details, tolerances, and failure modes that make an application stronger, so if you're mid-build it's often worth finishing first.

Start free: the USPTO's Patent Public Search and Google Patents are both open to anyone. Searching by concept rather than by your own terminology helps — inventors and patent attorneys rarely use the same words for the same thing.

A professional patentability search goes considerably further and produces a written opinion. No search is exhaustive: applications stay unpublished for eighteen months, so there's always a blind window nobody outside the USPTO can see into.

Maybe not in the U.S. — but the clock is running. A public disclosure, sale, or offer for sale starts a one-year grace period in the United States. File within that year and you're fine. Miss it and U.S. rights are gone permanently.

Outside the U.S. it's harsher: most countries have no grace period at all, so a public disclosure before filing forfeits rights there immediately. Pin down the exact date of first disclosure and talk to us now rather than next quarter.

Expect it. Most applications are rejected at least once, and a first office action rejecting every single claim is a routine opening move — examiners start from a defensible position and negotiate from there.

We respond by amending claims to distinguish the cited references while protecting commercially meaningful scope, and by arguing the law and the technology. If written rounds stall, an examiner interview often breaks the logjam in half an hour. Most issued patents were rejected on the way.

No. The "poor man's patent" is a myth with no legal effect whatsoever. The U.S. awards patents to the first inventor to file with the USPTO — a postmarked envelope establishes nothing. Only a filed application secures a priority date. If budget is the concern, a provisional application is the real version of what people hope the envelope will do.

Inventorship and ownership are separate questions. Inventors are the actual humans who conceived it — that's a factual matter and can't be assigned by agreement. Ownership is usually controlled by your employment contract, which commonly assigns work-scope inventions to the employer.

Read your employment agreement before you file anything. And get inventorship right: naming the wrong people, or leaving out a real contributor, can invalidate the patent later — often at exactly the moment you're trying to enforce it.

No. Patents are strictly territorial — a U.S. patent is enforceable only in the United States. Nothing stops a manufacturer in another country from making and selling your invention there.

Foreign protection means filing in each country or region, generally within twelve months of your first filing. A PCT application preserves your options in 150+ countries and pushes the expensive per-country decision out to about thirty months.

It means you have an application on file at the USPTO. It grants no enforceable rights by itself — you can't sue anyone for infringing a pending application.

What it does do is preserve your priority date and put competitors on notice that rights may be coming, which has real deterrent value. You may only mark products patent pending while an application is genuinely on file; false marking carries penalties.

Yes, gladly. Though it's worth knowing that registered patent practitioners already owe a duty of confidentiality to prospective clients from the first consultation, whether or not you end up hiring us and whether or not anything is signed.

That said — please don't put detailed confidential technical information into the website form or an unencrypted email before an engagement is in place. Describe your invention generally there, and save the specifics for the call.

Yes. We regularly step into pending applications — including ones that have gone final, stalled through multiple rounds, or been abandoned outright. Send us the application number and we'll pull the file history and tell you honestly what options remain and whether they're worth pursuing. Abandoned applications can sometimes be revived, but the window depends on how and when they went abandoned.

For the first conversation, just enough to understand the invention:

• What it is and what problem it solves
• How people solve that problem today, and why that's inadequate
• Sketches, drawings, or photos if you have them
• Any dates of public disclosure, sale, or offer for sale
• Whether you've filed anything on it before

The intake form walks through all of it and takes about ten minutes.