Which to File: Provisional Patent Applicatons or NonProvisional Patent Applications?

It used to be the case that Provisional applications were the first step along the arduous patent application process. They were typically drafted by the inventor pro per. And afterwards, the provisional patent application was sent over to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Occasionally, these Provisional Patent applications were edited by a patent attorney. This was done to save time and money. And these provisional applications were often sent out notwithstanding the fact that they were egregiously incomplete and poorly drafted. The problems with these applications have now come to a head in that developing case law expects and demands that provisional patent applications meet the traditional enablement requirements as per statute. Consequently, the provisional patent applications should not match up, nearly word for word, with their nonprovisional patent application counterpart. One of the main problems which inheres into the practice of Provisional applications is the fact that all of the enabling information required to teach one skilled in the art on how to make and use the invention must be provided in the provisional patent application. Moreover, this provisional patent application should closely resemble the non provisional patent application counterpart in order to avail itself of the previous filing date. Provisional patent applications which fail to adhere to this basic enablement requirement will be tossed out in the early stages of patent litigation. The Enablement requirement, a longstanding concept and precept of United States Patent Law requires that the specification and corresponding drawings point out in enabling detail all the pieces, steps, and embodiments necessary to teach one skilled in the art how to make and use the invention. Chief amongst the most commonly cited reasons for opting for a provisional patent application over a nonprovisional patent application is cost savings. Yet, the truth is that the difference in cost between a nonprovisional patent application and that of a provisional patent application should be no more than 20-25% at most. If the cost savings exceed that amount, then there should be a question as to how competently or effectively that particular patent application has been drafted. Therefore, this line of reasoning falls short of being reasonable. Since most of the attorney’s fees are directed to the specification and drawings any cost savings will be relatively negligible. As such, inventors should think long and hard about opting for provisional patent applications over nonprovisional patent applications. Furthermore, an inventor who is quoted a rate which is substantially less than the nonprovisional patent application would be wise to inquire as to the efficacy of that patent agent. los angeles lawyer patent attorney Los Angeles Patent Attorney