I Need To Get A Patent, Now What? ( And Other Useful Q&A’s ).
Patent information on the internet can be LESS than fun to sift through. Over the past few years in working with startups, we here at KISSPatent have noticed we receive quite a bit of rather specific questions around IP protection. With that in mind, we want to answer as many of those questions as possible!
We decided to make this all about you- you being our community! On social media & at our events, we receive a great deal of questions around our product and content. Here we will discuss the top questions that we receive.
How do I get a patent?
Our top, most asked question gets to the heart of IP protection — specifically, how to get a patent once you decide that you need it.
We’ve broken down the process into five simple stages so you have an understanding about how to get protection for your ideas and your startup.
- You need to know whether your idea is patent-worthy. That is, does it meet the high standards set by the USPTO? For example, if you published your idea more than one year ago, you can’t get a patent for it in the US. In other countries, once you publish, you can’t get a patent at all! Your idea also has to fall into a patentable category in order to qualify. Click here for a free video tutorial to Find Out If Your Idea Is Patent-worthy.
- You can (optionally) do a free search to find out if you are first to think of your idea. A great place to start your search is Google Patents; just enter some keywords and go!
- You need to prepare your text and drawings. Your patent drawings tell the story of your idea. Your text tells the story of your drawings. This part doesn’t have to be hard. If you can whiteboard your idea, then you are more than halfway to getting your drawings done. Your text and drawings together form your patent application.
- You’ll need to file your text and drawings — along with some forms — at a government patent office. In the US, this office is the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). For more about the USPTO, check this out.
- Lastly- you wait.Eventually the examiner — a representative of the USPTO — will check your application and decide if your patent should be granted. If not, then they’ll send you a letter — called an office action — to give you a chance to correct your application, so that you can qualify.
How much does a patent cost?
The short answer is “it depends”. You can go to a fancy patent lawyer and spend $10,000 just to file.
You can file a provisional application yourself for $140. The provisional only lasts one year to get your foot in the door with your filing date.
After filing, there are other expenses. For a standard application — which you must file eventually to get a patent — there are letters from the examiner (described above) which you have to answer. You can do it yourself, but if you pay someone else, the costs can start to rise quickly.
Here are our recommendations and how much they cost:
- File a US provisional application first. For most startups this is the best idea because it is quick and easy — and gives you one year to sort out what you need to protect. Allow a few thousand dollars (USD).
- Next file a regular US patent application in one year. This is one of the cheapest applications in the world to file because of low filing fees. Allow a few more thousand dollars (USD).
- In the next 2–3 years, the examiner (representative of the USPTO) will look at your application and decide whether you should receive a patent. Allow up to $4000 for the examination process (over several years).
- You then pay the issue fee for the patent to be granted — allow up to $2000.
- And then you pay maintenance fees every 3.5 years. Click here for the full list.
How do I file?
Filing for a patent isn’t difficult. After you prepare your application — text and drawings as described above — you need to prepare certain formal documents.
Click here for description of the formal documents.
Once your documents and application are ready, then you can file by mailing your application to the USPTO. You can include a form to pay by credit card. You can also file electronically.
Click here to find out how to file a patent.
Can I patent an idea?
Yes you can — IF it is patent-worthy. Want more information? Click here to Find Out If Your Idea Is Patent-worthy.
You can patent an idea as long as you can describe it in enough detail. You don’t need to build your idea before you patent it.
What’s enough detail? As long as someone in your field — say, an app programmer — can understand how to make and use your idea from your description, then you’ve included enough detail.
What is this?
Or, who are we and what is KISSPatent?
First of all, we are real people!
We get asked that too. Here’s a picture of our founder, D’vorah Graeser, taken in NYC WeWork New York, speaking to a room full of founders and inventors- just like you!
D’vorah has 20 years of experience as a US Patent Agent — like a patent attorney except that she’s not a lawyer. Instead, D’vorah focuses only on patents.
Our entire approach is based on putting the power of patents in the hands of startups and entrepreneurs — like yourselves. We want you to have access to the same power tools to increase your valuation that the BigCos do.
Patents can increase your valuation by $1 million. KISSPatent believes that all innovators should have access to patents and IP protection, not just the big, rich or well-connected ones.
This seems like an interesting approach, but how are you different?
KISSPatent has an innovator-centric approach. We put entrepreneurs and startups first in our process.
We don’t charge by the hour. Instead, KISSPatent only has fixed prices, so you know exactly how much everything will cost.
Our process is more efficient, because we focus on the innovator first, so working with us takes less of your time. For example, we start each application with the drawings. Makes sense right? Yet most attorneys start with the legal part of the patent first, which makes the entire process more complicated and costly.
Contact us to find out more! We’d love to hear from you.
Are you…..lawyers…(shudders)….?
No- but we
attorneys!
But we’re not so wild about how most of them do patents — charging by the hour, not starting the writing process from the drawings, costing the entrepreneur time and money. In our opinion, most patent attorneys are not innovator-centric.
D’vorah Graeser, the founder of KISSPatent (you can see her picture earlier in this post), is a US Patent Agent. This means that she passed the difficult patent bar exam (the same one that patent attorneys must pass) and is registered at the USPTO.
Like most US Agents, D’vorah is focused specifically on patents so her experience is very deep in the area.
US Patent Agents can’t go to court — for that you need a special type of attorney, known as a litigator — so they focus entirely on helping their clients get patents.
Click here for more information on the differences between attorneys and agents.
Is my idea safe with you?
Or, how do I know that you won’t steal my idea?
KISSPatent takes client confidentiality very seriously. We keep all of our clients’ ideas secret.
In fact, we are required to keep our clients’ ideas secret by law.
D’vorah Graeser would lose her license to practice as a US agent if she didn’t keep everything strictly confidential.
What is a Provisional Application?
We’ll tackle that subject in our next post — but briefly, a US Provisional Application is a quick, efficient and inexpensive way to file an application. It only lasts for one year, but allows startups to make changes and see if their idea really works, before committing the time and money to a regular patent application.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as we enjoyed putting it together! We want to make sure that we are giving our community the information that you are all looking for and making it easy to understand.
Ready to take it 1 step further? Check out our 8 audacious tips to increase your startup’s valuation. This guide will include actionable tips that you can apply today.
Was this article helpful? For more valuable content like this, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter, ❤ & follow us on social media.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/KISSPatent
Facebook-https://www.facebook.com/KISSPatent
