How to Patent an Idea Right Away

Share your ingenius invention with the world: patent your invention quickly and safely with a provisional application.

If you have an amazing and ambitious invention idea ready, prepare to submit your idea to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As an intellectual property-right, once you submit your patent, this right protects others from snagging your idea. Before you submit your idea, check the Patent and Trademark Office website to find out if another aspiring inventor has already submitted a similar patent. If your idea is still original, prepare to hand over the full-image and full-text patent proposal.

Things You'll Need

• Full-text of patent idea
• Full-image of patent idea, if possible
• Legal citizen status (for non-provisional applications)

Instructions

1. Visit the Patent and Trademark Office's web page "Process for Obtaining a Utility Patent" which displays a flow chart for submissions. Check to see if your idea has already been patented using the link provided.

2. 

   Check that another inventor has not already patented your idea.

   Choose which kind of patent you wish to submit. The Patent and Trademark Office divides patent genres into three categories: design patents, utility patents and plant patents. Design patents add ornamental or adaptive features to a product to create more efficiencies or safer use; utility patents--the most common patents--suggest new machines or manufacturing processes; plant patents define the discovery of a new asexually reproducing plant species. Check that your patent can fit into one of these categories.

3. Select a provisional application. To patent an idea quickly, choose the provisional application which submits your idea faster--and for less money--into the database. This provisional application is a sort of first-draft patent that quickly claims the idea as your own and places U.S. domestic applicants on equal-footing with foreign applicants with respect to the patent term. A provisional application for a patent lasts 12 months from the date the filing date.

4. 

   Write a description of your invention that includes its functions and how to use the object.

   Write a description of the invention, complying with all consolidated law requirements. Some of these laws mandate that the written description must detail the manner and process of making and using the object. Write in full, clear, concise, and exact terms so that any reader--skilled or unskilled in the related art or science--can understand how to use or make sense of the patent. Also submit any drawings or visuals necessary to understand the invention. These drawings must also meet the "consolidated laws."

5. 

   Mail the patent application, description and drawing to the patent office by regular mail.

   Submit the provisional application. Download the provisional application from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website. Include the name of all inventors and the residential address(es) of all inventors. Create a title for the invention. Also include any US Government agency that has a property interest in the application, if applicable. Pay the application fee. As of June 2010, the provisional application fee is $220. Pay by cash or check, credit card, Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) through a bank, on-line fee payment centers like eBiz and PayPal. Mail the provisional application and filing fee to the Commissioner for Patents, P. O. Box 1450, Alexandria, VA 22313-1450, as of 2010.

6. File a corresponding non-provisional application for the invention. If you included all required materials in the provisional application you will receive a "filing date." From this date, you have 12 months to submit a non-provisional application. While the provisional patent application protects your idea and guarantees that it is your original concept, it is not yet a fully patented idea. During the 12-month interim period, submit a non-provisional application. Download the non-provisional application from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website.

Tips & Warnings

• Do not submit a patent to a forum if you want money and recognition for the idea--forum members can swipe your suggestion and patent it themselves without any legal infringements.

References

• United States Patent and Trademark Office: Process for Obtaining a Utility Patent
• Patent Full-Text and Full-Page Image Database (PatFT)
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Fee Schedule

Resources

• United States Patent and Trademark Office: Process for Obtaining a Utility Patent
• Creativity Pool: Free Ideas
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Forms
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Written Description: Consolidated Laws
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Iventors Assistance Center (IAC)