Provisional patent application
FROM 850 € excl.taxes
You don’t have the budget for a regular patent application? Worried that someone else might file a similar application while you are developing your prototype? The provisional patent allows you to make a quick date with a reduced budget.
The stakes of a provisional patent application
Filing a “normal” patent application implies providing the French PTO (INPI) with a complete descriptive file of the innovation and a part called “claims” explaining precisely the monopoly you wish to obtain.
This requires having an invention that is already well exemplified, and incurring costs to hire an industrial property attorney to draft the patent application and pay the filing and examination fees to the INPI. As long as the patent application is not filed, there is a significant risk that someone else will file a patent on a similar invention or disclose the invention, thus cancelling all your chances of obtaining a patent and thus an exclusive right on this invention.
So, the filing of a provisional patent application is a new and very interesting tool available to companies as well as to individuals in order to make a date with INPI, before obtaining all the results and prototypes, at a lower cost since the patent attorney will spend less time on the drafting of the provisional patent than for a regular patent and that the INPI fees are 10 times less.
The provisional patent application allows companies :
- to develop their prototypes,
- continue their R&D work,
- while having a legal priority.
The complexity of the drafting and the cost of the patent application procedure are removed, or at least postponed by one year.
The benefits of a provisional patent
The protection of innovations is an obvious growth vector for companies. An industrial property right directly brings value to a company, either :
- through a financial valuation, or
- by adding value to a patent through its use in marketed products, or
- the provision of licenses (paying or not, exclusive or not).
The provisional patent application is therefore a simplified procedure for a 1 year protection, allowing a company to obtain a prior art date for a low cost.
This is sometimes the ideal time to:
1. develop a prototype,
2. validate a proof of concept (POC).
A 12-month period also allows you to evaluate the market potential of your invention. You can even start a commercialization in order to achieve a proof of concept that will validate your work.
It is important to realize that the patentability criteria for a patent require, among other things, complete confidentiality. However, in a development phase, it is often in the interest of companies to be able to communicate about their innovation, if only to their financial partners, their suppliers or their future clients.
In this sense, the application for a provisional patent allows to access as soon as possible to a date of anteriority for an innovation, even at an extremely early stage of research and development, and to be annexed to non-disclosure agreements.
Why filing a provisional patent application with YesMyPatent ?
A quality patent is when the industrial property right is drafted in such a way as to provide optimal protection for its holder and cannot be easily circumvented by a competitor. Thus, an industrial property attorney will adapt the level of protection and the content of the claims to your particular situation.
For the drafting of a provisional patent tailored to your needs, it is particularly relevant to call upon a YesMyPatent patent attorney.
These exchanges, subject to professional secrecy, result in:
1. the drafting of claims that define the scope of protection of your innovation
2. If necessary, the creation of a figure by a professional draftsman completes the file.
Note that the industrial property attorney is a professional registered at INPI. As an agent, he can represent you before the administrative department to file the provisional patent application and follow the whole procedure until the grant. He will also advise you of the deadlines, and in particular the 12-month deadline to transform the provisional patent application into a regular patent application.
A patent attorney, specialized in industrial property, can also assist you with additional procedures (design, trademarks, contracts…) depending on your situation and the stage of development of your innovation.
Patent attorneys and lawyers work hand in hand, as YesMyPatent does with its partner lawyers.