I will explain this in my words, if you want the legal description and all the nuances, then check the USPTO site.
A Provisional Patent is the procedure that replaced the Disclosure Documents Program (DDP Original Explanation here). The DDP was discontinued in 2007. A Provisional Patent is basically named to look like a real patent, it is different than a real patent (Non-Provisional Patent)and the DDP, because you have to put a lot more detail into the Provisional than you needed to in the DDP. The DDP was basically to establish that you had a real date from the USPTO for when you had the idea. Which is not much, but if you had to go to court, it was a little better than sending a letter to yourself (Which is what old-timers did.
Benefit:
The biggest benefit of the Provisional Patent, for me, is that you get an advance filing date. Let me give you an example. If you file a provisional patent on Jan 1, 2014, then you have till December 31, 2014 to file for the non-Provisional Patent (The real Patent. When you file the Non-Provisional patent, it is as if you had filed it on Jan 1, 2014 (Not Dec 31, 2014). This is an advantage that helps you shop and market the product, process or service for one year and see if there’s any market before doing the full blown patent.
Another benefit is the cost. To file a provisional patent costs:
- Micro Entity – $65
- Small Entity – $130
- Regular Entity – $260
That is all you pay, because it expires in a year. If you don’t file the Non-Provisional by that time, then you lose that priority filing date, and you will have to file the Non-Provisional, or file another Provisional.
Warning:
If you filed your Provisional on Jan 1, 2014, but you have shared the idea with the public before then, (say in Oct of 2013), and it’s Jan 2, 2015 and you have not filed a Non-Provisional patent yet, then there are big issues. If you had shared it, on a website, a public event, or?? it was before filing the first provisional (Jan 1, 2014), then this is the major issue:
- Because the invention is known for more than 1 year, it is in the public domain
- You cannot file another provisional,
what’s worse, is:
- If the first Provisional has expired, now you cannot even file the Non-Provisional patent at this stage. It would have been publicly known for more than 1 year.
So be careful with these issues, while the Provisional has advantages, it does have disadvantages also.
Disadvantage:
- You cannot make major changes to the Provisional or they will consider that a different patent.
If your Provisional is different than the Non-Provisional, then it’s really a different invention right? and needs to be filed differently, with a different filing date. This is to stop people from filing multiple patents as a placeholder and then just coming up with things and in essence backdating the date of the invention.
I hope this helps. I can help you file an application, but the heavy lifting still has to be done by you. You have to describe everything about the invention and get ready to spend some time, maybe 2-3 days writing the descriptions and correcting and making sure you cover all bases, so when you file the actual Non-Provisional, that you don’t get rejected as a very different invention.