Patent Cost
Ask a patent attorney or a patent agent how much it costs to obtain a patent and you may be surprised to hear a wide-open cost range of between $2,000 and $20,000. To understand why patent costs vary so widely, we need to look at each step in the patent application and approval process and examine the costs involved.
Patent Search
If your invention is too similar to one that has already been disclosed, your patent application will be denied. You’d hate to discover this after having spent thousands of dollars in preparing and filing your application. You can avoid flushing a lot of money down the drain by doing a patent search first.
You can try searching the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database yourself, or even Google Patents. If you find an existing patent for an invention essentially the same as yours, you will have saved yourself the cost of a professional patent search, as well as an expensive but fruitless patent application.
Not finding any obvious patent conflicts on your own does not put you in the clear, however. Elements of your invention may be included in more than one other patent using language slightly different from what you used in your search. This is where you’ll need a professional search to uncover these issues and a patent agent or attorney to analyze how they affect your invention’s patentability.
The cost of a patent search varies depending on whether your invention is a simple mechanical device or involves more complicated technologies, but may range from $600 to $2000 or so. A patent agent may charge a little less than an attorney, but an attorney can offer a legal opinion if needed.
Drawings
The Patent Office requires appropriate drawings to illustrate the invention. Because the drawings need to conform to a particular style, an experienced patent draftsman is often used, and the charge is around $100 to $150 per drawing. A typical uncomplicated application requires about three drawings.
Preparing the Application
You have two choices when filing an application. You can file a provisional application, and then follow that within one year by the regular application. Or you can just file the regular application to begin with.
The provisional application is simpler to complete and can be filed more quickly than the regular application. This allows you to establish the all-important filing date, which puts you ahead of anyone else who may be claiming to have invented something similar. It also gives you a lower cost way to potentially lock up the rights to your invention while you decide whether it will be worth the sizable additional expense to file a regular application.
Preparing a regular application is normally the most expensive part of the process. For the simplest inventions, a patent agent or patent attorney may charge from $3,500 to $6,000 to prepare all the documents required to submit to the USPTO. A moderately complex innovation could range from $6,000 to $12,000, while a very complex one could cost $12,000 to $20,000
If a provisional application is filed first, preparation cost could range from $1,500 for the simplest to $5,000 for the very complex. But the majority of this cost is typically deducted from the later fees for the regular application because much of the information on the provisional is used for the regular.
Filing Fees
The USPTO requires a filing fee with each application submitted. Applicants who qualify as a “small entity” enjoy a reduced fee schedule about 50% lower than the fees paid by large companies. Currently, the small entity fees are under $600, but fees are raised annually.
If you file a provisional application, you’ll pay a slightly lower filing fee for that application, then pay the full filing fee when you submit the regular application.
There are a variety of other possible fees that may be levied if the application includes an unusual number of claims or drawings, or if certain deadlines are missed for responding to the patent office’s requests for additional information or documents. (For a complete fee schedule, see http://www.uspto.gov/go/fees/.)
Patent Prosecution
After the application is filed, a government patent examiner begins the rigorous process of determining whether or not your invention qualifies for patent protection. Patent applications are routinely rejected initially because of some objection the examiner has. The patent attorneys or patent agents charge extra each time they are required to respond to the patent office’s action letters to clarify the examiner’s concerns or file an amendment to the application. Their fees could range from $1,000 to $5,000 for each response, depending on the time each requires.
Patent Appeal
If your patent application is ultimately denied, there is a process for filing an appeal. This process could cost from $2,000 to $10,000 additional in filing fees and attorney or patent agent costs.
Patent Issuance
When your patent application is approved, final drawings and documents are prepared and submitted to the USPTO with the issuance fee. Altogether, the drawings, government fees and attorney/agent expense can be $1,500 to $2,500.
Patent Maintenance
To keep a patent valid and in force requires periodic payment of patent maintenance fees. The rationale for these fees is that if it is not worth it to the patent owner to pay the maintenance fee, then the invention should be released into the public domain to spur further innovation.
Maintenance fees are due 3 ½ years, 7 ½ years, and 11 ½ years after patent issuance. The first fee is currently about $1000, the second is about $2500, and the third is about $4100.
Summary
Given all the variables of invention complexity, optional choice of a provisional application, and responding to an unpredictable number of patent examiner concerns, it’s easy to see now why the cost of a patent can vary so widely.
Perhaps more helpful in predicting the patent costs for your invention, however, is the observation of one prominent patent attorney that for two-thirds of his clients, the entire patent application and issuance experience costs between $7,000 and $15,000 – maintenance fees extra.
Related Articles
- How to Patent Your Invention
- Is My Idea Patentable?
- Choosing Between Patent and Trade Secret Protection
- How to License Your Invention
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