What is a “provisional” patent application?
A provisional patent application is a way to establish and protect a “date of invention” for one year. The provisional patent application was created to provide inventors with an inexpensive way to temporarily protect their inventions. The provisional patent application gives an inventor twelve (12) months to prepare a full patent application. A provisional patent application allows the inventor(s) establish an early effective filing date for a patent without a formal patent claim, oath, declaration or an information disclosure statement.
The provisional patent application is an application that can be filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that establishes the effective filing date of a patent application. The provisional application is not examined by the USPTO, and may remain pending for one year. At the end of the period, UNCW must elect to either drop the filing and allow the information to become public, or convert the provisional application to a regular patent application. In the case UNCW, the OTT will work with the inventors to make this decision on behalf of UNCW.
In some instances, because of, for example, time constraints, costs or other reasons, a decision is made not to file the usual patent application. In such cases, a provisional application may be filed instead. These are frequently filed where the inventor is giving a speech or other type of presentation, where the invention will be revealed and the inventor is desirous of protecting the invention but there is insufficient time to file the normal patent application. In such instances a provisional application may be filed. The provisional application must have a written description of the invention. The Patent Office fee, however, for a provisional application is only $200 for a large entity and $100 for a small entity. The provisional application merely postpones the time for filing a patent application one year. The complete patent application must be filed within one year of the filing of the provisional application.
A provisional patent application is a simplified application that merely describes how to make and use an invention. It is less expensive to prepare than a full patent application and it gives inventors a year to assess the commercial value of their inventions before filing the full “nonprovisional” patent application. Having a provisional application also lets you say that your invention is “patent pending”.
A. A provisional patent application is a United States patent application that may be filed without some of the formalities required of a regular patent application. A provisional patent application is not examined by the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office, and a patent cannot issue directly from a provisional application. A provisional application is abandoned as a matter of law one year after its filing date. A provisional application may be “continued” by filing a regular, nonprovisional patent application satisfying all necessary formalities within one year of the provisional filing date. The principal advantage of a provisional patent application is that its pendency, which cannot exceed one year, does not count as part of the twenty-year patent term. Although a provisional application need not satisfy all the formal requirements of a regular patent application, a provisional application should not be viewed as a vehicle to file a hastily-prepared application, with the thought that
