My Prosperous World

What does it mean to get a “provisional patent”? I’m glad you asked that.
WE hear that term a lot now and, unless you KNOW what it means. It could be
confusing. A “provisional patent” is a fairly new type of patent developed by
the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) so that someone can get a placeholder in the line of patent applicants. Plus, you get to use the
words “Patent Pending” on your invention. They do not pass or judge on the patentability of the application but the holder of a provisional patent is
protected from theft when negotiating with someone to produce the invention. A provisional patent is good for one year only and you must use that time to
either assign your patent rights or apply for a regular patent. That’s pretty
much the entire concept of the “provisional” in “provisional patent”.

Getting protection is of paramount importance when you want to market your idea to someone who can get the regular patent and produce your idea. When you have a provisional patent, you are telling the prospects that you had enough sense to get protection and are serious about making your idea pay. If you can get more than one producer interested, so much the better. That way you get the most for your idea.

So, how do you get a provisional patent? You can go to the USPTO web site at www.uspto.gov and sort through all the forms they have and figure out what to do yourself. That will probably take about 20-30 hours of research. You will have to decide if you have that much time to devote to the effort. If you do, go the the web site named above and get going.

There are services on the web that will fill in and file the forms for you. You have to input the information on their web site and that information is entered by them into the correct forms and after you pay the fee (maybe $80 to $120) the forms are submitted for you. Alternatively, lawyers will do the work but are generally very expensive. Finally, there are downloadable kits available and some even are reuseable many times for a relatively small fee.

No one can guarantee success when you have to interact with a government
agency but by using a kit that someone else has used successfully will be a big step up and will help a lot. Use a search engine on the internet and try
to find a “provisional patent kit”. Start your research there and you will be well on your way to getting the right to use the term “Patent Pending”.

The author can recommend the following Provisional Patent Application Kit And this website gives more info on How to Write a Provisional Patent