How to file a provisional patent application

A provisional patent application is a lower cost US filing that secures an early filing date for an invention without starting examination. It gives you 12 months to refine the invention, test the market or raise funding before committing to a full application.

‍

What does a provisional application actually do?

It holds your place. The filing date is what matters, because novelty is judged as at that date.

It does not lead to a granted patent on its own. It is never examined, and it lapses silently after 12 months unless a non-provisional application is filed to claim its date.

‍

What do you need to include?

1. A full description. How the invention works, how it is made, and what it is used for. Detailed enough that someone skilled in the field could reproduce it.
2. Drawings or diagrams. Visuals that support the written description.
3. The filing itself. Submitted through the patent office's electronic system with the required forms.

Formal claims are not required, which is what makes it simpler and cheaper.

‍

What is the catch?

The description limits you later. A non-provisional application can only claim the provisional's filing date for material the provisional actually disclosed.

A thin provisional therefore buys a date for very little. Anything added later gets the later date, which is exactly the gap prior art appears in.

‍

What happens after 12 months?

You file the non-provisional application, or you lose the date. There is no extension.

"Patent pending" can be used from the moment the provisional is filed, though it signals only that an application exists, not that any right is enforceable.

Patent renewal fees do not arise at this stage. They begin only once a patent is granted, and from that point they run for the life of the patent.