What Patents Cost   

Since Patent Professionals aren't all that upfront with this information, probably so as not to scare potential customers away with sticker shock, here are the numbers:

Before we show you plan A. and B.       There's the "poor man's patent".  This is where you sit right down and write yourself a letter, and so far no one has ever escaped the grip of poverty using a "poor man's patent".   Well, there one way it might work.     PMP lesson

A.  doing it yourself at the U.S.P.T.O.:

    provisional application fee     $100.00  

       First a word on the provisional application:   say this:    It's a provisional........patent application,   not     a provisional patent.........application.   There is no such thing as a provisional patent.     This is worth repeating.   There is no such thing as a provisional patent.  I cringe when I read questions on those inventor message boards like this:  "My provisional patent is about to expire, what do I do now?"

The provisional patent application (PPA) puts your application in line for a possible patent.  Nothing is done with it till you file a non-PPA.  It just sits at the United States Patent and Trademark Office waiting for you to make a move.  You have one year in which to file a regular patent application that can claim the filing date of the PPA.  The legal requirements for the PPA are loose in some regards but extremely tight in others.  We go into this in lesson 1.  These is also a recent court case that shows the potential disasters when using an insufficient PPA:  New Railhead Manufacturing v. Vermeer Manufacturing Co. and Earth Tool Co.   (Lesson 1.)   The provisional patent application can be an inexpensive and handy tool but one that can also blow up in your face if you don't know what you're doing.

Regular Patent Application fee:     $150.00

Search fee                                    250.00

Examination fee                            100.00

Patent Issue fee                            700.00

total                                            1200.00     if your application is not published (PTO web site)

publication fee                               300.00     if your application is published

total                                            $1500.00   (with no PPA)   $  $1600.00  (with)

We'll go into the reasons for having your application published or not in lesson 1.

So those are the do it yourself numbers for acquiring a patent   $1500.    or $1600. depending on the publication option, plus another $100.00 each  if you used a PPA.

Also once your patent is pending either with a PPA ($10) or a non-PPA or regular patent application ($500) is filed, it's time to sell your idea.  If you connect with someone interested in your idea, almost always they will pick up the tab on your patent work.  At this point you'll be using OPM (pronounced opium):   other people's money.  OPM gives one a euphoric, contented sense of well being.

B.  Hiring it out:

Some Patent Law Firms list their fees, these of course vary with the complexity of your application.  A mistake we see on lots of patent applications is the lack of multiple versions of an invention.  By providing different versions or as they're referred to "embodiments" of your idea you are able to better illustrate how broad your idea is.  If you're doing this yourself, having multiple "embodiments" adds not one cent to the cost of acquiring a patent.  However, adding these multiple embodiments can really crank up the fees when using a patent professional.  Having said that, here are some rough numbers one might encounter using others to do your work assuming an invention of average complexity with one "embodiment".

Drafting the application     $5000.00

the search                            450.00

drawings                            1000.00     cost to "patent pending status"   $6450.

prosecution to issue            2000.00    If your case get's bogged down as most good ones do this will quadruple!     

PTO fees                          1500.00    (if not published)

  total                                $10,550.00      or   $10,850.00      (if published)

These professional fees can increase dramatically depending on many factors.   The one's at the top of the page (the do it yourself numbers) cannot provided you stay within the allowed number of claims for the filing fee ($500.).  We'll go over this completely in Lesson 1.

The bottom line is that doing it yourself can be done at about 1/10th the price of using a professional and if your application is very complicated that could be 1/20th.   Or $1,000.00   vs  $10,000.   and $1,000.00   vs.   $20,000.00.

Patent attorney David Pressman, in Patent it Yourself, tells us that given the choice of fixing your car yourself versus doing your own patent work, the latter is the better deal for you.   Or as he puts it in PIY "even though most car mechanics make a pretty good living, most of them can't afford to belong to the same country club as patent attorneys."  While the Pro Se Posse and I don't care too much for that bourgeois crack, David Pressman is right.  In fact, more times than not you could buy a brand new car* for what a patent costs when using a patent lawyer.   *with an extended warranty.                              

There is also another reason for doing it yourself.  Doing it better.  A couple of mechanics, Wilbur and Orville Wright, paid good country-club-dues-paying-money for one miserable looking patent.  We explain this sad tale in Lesson 2 when we look at this "airplane disaster" of a patent and relentless court cases that that it spawned.  One decently drafted process claim (the means clause was not available at the time) or describing an embodiment using hinged surfaces to control roll, is all it would have taken for the Wrights to have acquired trouble-free ownership of all U.S. airspace for controlled, sustained, heavier than air flight for 14 years (lifetime of a patent then, longer now).  Remember it was the Curtis JN 4 "Jenny" that found it's way to England as a trainer in WWI.  Good fences make good neighbors, bad fences do not.           

http://www.house.gov/writerep/