Understanding the need for filing provisional application for patent

All the patents in the United States are issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). While the application process for filing a patent can be quite lengthy and complex, the USPTO offers the inventors a provisional patent that assist in protecting investors for duration of twelve months while in the mean time they can organize their full patent applications. A patent application is considered to be less expensive and much easier to obtain. However, in order to prepare a provisional application for patent, it requires the guidance of an expert professional that can assist you during the entire procedure of obtaining a provisional patent for your invention. Once the Provisional Patent Application is filed with the USPTO, you can safely notify people about your invention and seek investors for development and sale of your product as now your invention is protected for twelve months duration.

Provisional applications usually delay the costs of the US application process. Provisional patents are considered to be typically less expensive than utility application. Therefore some of the applicants use the trick of one-year lifespan of the provisional such that they can market their invention and decide whether it can be successfully commercialized or not. However, if at the end of twelve months, your invention doesn't seem to likely have a future, the applicant may choose to simply let the provisional abandon and further not file a follow-on patent application and hence dedicating the invention to the public. In such a case, filing a provisional patent might considered to have been a sensible economic decision if it permitted the claimant to spend less money than it would have spent on a complete utility application. However, if the applicant decides that the invention does have a market, a patent application will have to be filed with the twelve months duration. The inventor should note that in this situation, the overall cost will be more, as the applicant will have to pay the normal cost of the utility application but will also have born the cost of the provisional while investigating with the marketability of the invention.

Failure to file the provisional application within that one-year period can abolish your patent rights. A provisional application thus has the propensity to compress the US patent application decisions at the end of the provisional patent’s 12-month life. This forces the claimant to decide not just whether to file in the US, but also whether and where to file patent applications.