MiNeeds Blog

There are several things you need to know when you file a patent that could lower your filing costs. In this blog, I’ll go over some tips that I found very helpful in bringing my filing costs down. Consider the following:

1) Provisional Patent:

Consider filing a provisional patent. This type is extremely useful if you have limited funds. It gives you a window of 12 months to file the full-fledged non-provisional patent. The cost of having an attorney prepare a provisional patent application is substantially lower than the non-provisional type. To read more about it, please refer to my blog “Types of Patents“.

2) Do it Yourself

You can always do a big part of writing up the patent application yourself. If you have the time, you can even file the patent yourself without the use of an attorney. If this is something you want to pursue, I highly recommend you read the details of how to do so on the US Patent & Trademark Office website:
http://www.uspto.gov/main/patents.htm

This would be something to consider when filing a provisional patent. On the other hand, if your patent is a more complex one, I recommend you hire a patent attorney or a professional to do it. The cost might be well worth it.

A note about the patent application queue:
It is important to know that when you do file a patent, most of the time your patent application sits in a queue for a while at the patent office. When they finally get to it, many times they will reject one or more clauses in your application. So, you’ll have to revise it and send it back. This is very normal so don’t let such an occurrence discourage you. Stay at it and respond as quickly as you can.

3) Patent Bar Professionals vs Patent Attorneys

Attorneys are not the only people that can file high quality patents for you. There are some great professionals out there that have passed the patent bar exam that could do a great job as well. The patent bar gives those professionals great knowledge in filing patents. And since these professionals are not attorneys, then most probably their cost for filing patents will be lower than attorneys.

Attorneys who have earned both their state bar and the patent bar are the most expensive in the market. They are of course attorneys and would have a lot to bring to the plate when filing patents especially with those two degrees. But just remember that an attorney with such credentials doesn’t necessarily do a better job than a non-attorney professional who passed the patent bar. Some of these professionals have a background similar to your invention (technology, biology, etc.), and might actually do a great job on your patent application.

Best Regards,
Raed Malhas
Co-founder, www.MiNeeds.com; A New Way to Shop Local Services

There are several types of patents you can file for your invention. Knowing which one to file is important. There are also more affordable options available that are important to be aware of. In this blog, I’ll explain each type of patent. In my next blog, I’ll share some tips on how to save on patent costs.

Before I begin, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog titled “Should I Protect/Patent my Idea?“. If you’re contemplating whether or not to file a patent for your invention, I highly recommend you read that blog first.

Types of Patents:

1) Utility Patent (Non-Provisional Patent Application)

This is the full-fledged patent application you would file for inventions. As the name indicates, it is filed for a certain novel ‘function’ of the invention. Some examples are: In technology, this would be a new software algorithm, a mathematical model, an innovative circuit, etc. In Biology, this would be a new way to decode the human genome, and so on. In upholstery, this is a new type of Velcro material, etc.

Cost: $8,000 - 12,000. A general rule is: the more complex the filing application needs to be, the higher your cost will be.

Recommendations: Before you hire someone, do research online to find out how much should you be paying for your patent. I would research two things: the type of patent you need to file and the average cost of patents in the field of your invention. This will give you a good idea of your cost.

2) Provisional Patent Application (the affordable short-term option)

This patent application was designed by the USPTO (U.S. Patent & Trademark Office) to provide inventors a lower-cost patent filing option. This patent type gives you 12 months to file the non-provisional patent application. To make one thing clear, in order to get a utility patent for your invention, you must file the non-provisional application before the 12-month period of filing a provisional one has passed.

But does it make sense to file a provisional first then a non-provisional within a year? You’re right, the cost will be more eventually when you add the two. But, the great advantage of having the option of filing a provisional patent application is that: if you are short on funds, and you really want to protect your idea, the provisional option will give you the peace-of-mind that your idea is protected while not draining your limited funds. Also, within 12 months from the conception of the idea, you might not even want to pursue it. So, not spending that big payment on a non-provisional patent upfront might be a wise option to do.

Of course, if you have the funds and know you’ll still be pursuing the idea in a year, then it makes sense for you to go down the route of a non-provisional patent right away. Cost: $1,000 - $4,000. Again, depends on the complexity.

3) Design Patent

As the name indicates, this patent relates to the visual characteristics of a creation. It could be a certain glass design you invented or a design of a website, etc.

4) Plant PatentThis is used for inventors who have created or discovered and asexually reproduced a new variety of plant.

Declaimer: the cost numbers I shared in this article are based on my personal experience and research. The cost may vary from these ranges. Moreover, the description I provided is summary information of what I found useful to understand when filing a patent. For more information about the types of patents, please visit the US Patent & Trademark Office website at:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/types.htm

Best Regards,

Raed Malhas
Co-founder, www.MiNeeds.com; a new way to shop local services

A lot of entrepreneurs wonder whether they should protect their ideas via patents or not. This is actually a long debate that has been going on for years. One school of thought says that that patenting ideas hinder innovation. The other highly encourages inventors to patent their creations.

I don’t know what the best answer is, but I’ll share with you two experiences that I had which I hope will help you in making a good decision on this.

The first is via a product that I built for my charity company; DreamCollege. It’s a product that binds socks during laundry to avoid losing them in washing machines. I decided to patent this product. And I filed what’s called a “utility” patent for it. For those interested in the types of patents you can file, I’ll add a blog entry soon describing the different types and what they apply for. Anyway, the patent ended up costing me about $7,500, and keep in mind that I used an attorney who’s a friend of a friend, so supposedly I got a good deal on it.

The product has been out now for over a year and a half, and Walmart hasn’t bought my invention yet nor has anyone duplicated it!

To be honest, I don’t know how effective or useful filing this patent has been. So far, not very. But filing it made me feel more protected. Maybe someday it’ll turn out to be a great decision. I sometimes wonder, if someone does ever duplicate my product, will I actually try to sue them? I don’t know, but I doubt it, simply because it doesn’t seem like an attractive option with the cost and hassle involved.

My second experience is software. When I was working at Microsoft, we pretty much filed every software idea we thought was novel. Doesn’t matter if we were going to build it or not, we just filed it just in case the company decided to pursue it someday or one of our competitors was to think about it. Now, Microsoft is the largest software company in the world, and they can definitely afford to do that. If you are a small business pursuing software, your decisions will be slightly different.

At the software startup I co-founded, MiNeeds, my business partner and I listed all the ideas we built into our website that we thought are novel and worth patenting. We had to consider our budget as a small business, especially that we are still operating organically with no funding, and thus prioritized the ideas that are the core of our invention. Again, the question surfaced; do we file patents or hold?

After researching this and talking to our mentors, here’s my opinion on this:

Software is an interesting field, and these days software startups seem to be valued by two main things: your IP (Intellectual Property; so the number of patents you have) plus your number of customers. Also, if you are pursuing a hot area in software, and in our case we’ve built an online search and an advertising platform, then the competition is fierce and the innovation pace is rapid.

For those reasons, we decided that it is wise to file our core software inventions that protect our core ideas. And we decided not to file the ones that not as crucial to our business.

Regards,

Raed Malhas