Patent question?

Question

How much does it cost to get a U.S. Patent?

How long does it take to get a patent?

How much work is involved with getting a patent?

Thanks!

Answer 1

How much does it cost is variable, but the basic filing fee as of December 8, 2006 is $300 for a large entity, and $150 for an individual.

Of course, that does not include the fee that you attorney or patent agent will charge you, and there are other fees as well. I believe that you are looking at somewhere between $1000-$3000 for getting a patent.

How much work? Very little if you agent does it all for you. A lot if you do it yourself (probably a bad idea if you never done it before).

Be sure to keep a detailed journal of you ideas, and how much, and WHEN you worked on it. Make sure that you carefully document everything, and make sure you put an accurate DATE on all of your journal entries, and any prototype drawings.

If you insist on doing it yourself, the fee schedule for the U.S. patent office is at the first link (below). You can also go to the self-help section of the local bookstore or library and look up "Patent it Yourself" or "Licensing Your Invention".

You can download the required forms at the second link.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2007february01.htm#patapp

http://www.uspto.gov/index.html

===edit===

How long varies, but my group currently has an a 12-18 month backlog (I.E.: it will take you 18 months after initial filing before we get back to you). You agent will probably take the allowed 3-6 months to respond to the USPTO, and the examiner will probably take 2 months to respond to your agent, and so on. Usually the haggling between the USPTO and your patent attorney over the precise language of the claims takes a year or so, so you are looking at about 2-3 years total to get a patent (unless you file an appeal, with usually adds another couple of years).

Answer 2

The basic costs are the fees required by the patent office. There is an application fee, plus a fee for each claim allowed. You would have to contact the patent office for a schedule of current fees. However, those fees are usually only a small part of patent costs; you should use a patent attorney, and that will cost thousands, depending on the complexity of the invention. In addition, you may need to hire draftsman to do the drawings.

The length of time varies, and depends on how much prior art is discovered by the examiner. You may have to amend the original application several times. Unless you run into real problems, expect 2 to 5 years.

The preparation of the application is a lot of work, and responding to the examiner's review also takes a lot of time (sometimes an in-person interview is necessary). However, there are long periods when nothing happens.

Contact the US Patent office; they have publications available that describe the process in detail.

Answer 3

I suggest that you start here:

http://www.uspto.gov/main/patents.htm

Good luck!