U.S. Patents

If you own a live U.S. patent, you have the legal right to prevent others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, and/or importing into the U.S. whatever invention/product is claimed in your U.S. patent for a set number of years (e.g., up to 20 years for a U.S. utility patent and for 15 years for a U.S. design patent).

And if another makes, uses, sells, offers to sell, and/or imports into the U.S. a product that is claimed by your live U.S. patent, without your permission, then that person might be infringing your U.S. patent and you may be able to sue that person for U.S. patent infringement and obtain damages (money) from that infringer. You may also be able to prevent the infringer from any further infringing conduct.

So, owning a U.S. patent can provide you, the patent owner, with a monopoly on that product/invention for a number of years. And that is why you may want a U.S. patent.

Obtaining a U.S. patent is very rarely a DIY project. Hiring a USPTO registered patent attorney, like myself, is almost always desired.

To obtain a U.S. patent, you must first have a proper U.S. non-provisional patent application timely filed with the USPTO (Patent Office) within one year of a first public disclosure of your invention (or preferably before any such public disclosure of your invention); and your invention must be “novel,” “non-obvious,” and of the appropriate “subject matter” for a U.S. patent. The inventor of the invention/product must also be identified in that given U.S. patent application.

If you are not the inventor and want to have U.S. patent application prepared and filed, then you’ll want to have the inventor assign their rights to you. And in addition to that signed written assignment from the inventor, you’ll still need to identify the inventor in the U.S. patent application.

Preparing a given U.S. patent application can be a lengthy and/or a complex process (e.g., sometimes just preparing a given U.S. patent application for initial filing can take months, but a few weeks is more typical for simpler inventions).

And the examination (prosecution) of the pending U.S. patent application by the USPTO (U.S. Patent Office) can also be a lengthy and/or a complex process (e.g., can take months or years). And many filed U.S. patent applications will never mature into an issued/official U.S. patent (for all kinds of reasons).

For any U.S. patent application, you are generally going to have at least three different costs to prepare and file that patent application. These three different types of costs are: (1) the patent attorney fee; (2) the USPTO governmental fee; and (3) the cost to prepare patent drawings.

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For a U.S. provisional patent application, I usually charge my patent attorney fee of $1,000.

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For a U.S. non-provisional patent application, I usually charge my patent attorney fee from $2,500 to $5,000, depending upon some variables, such as, but not limited to: invention complexity; whether a provisional was filed or not; and/or on how crowded the given technical field might be with relevant prior art (which may or may not be known, depending upon if a prior art search was done).

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For a U.S. design patent application, I usually charge my patent attorney fee of $600.

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The USPTO (Patent Office) currently charges $75 (micro-entity) or $150 (small entity) for a basic provisional patent application.

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The USPTO (Patent Office) currently charges $455 (micro-entity) or $830 (small entity) for a basic non-provisional patent application.

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The USPTO (Patent Office) currently charges $255 (micro-entity) or $510 (small entity) for a basic design patent application.

Note, the USPTO fees can change from time to time.

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And patent drawings that we prepare for a given U.S. patent application typically cost $15 per figure for provisional / non-provisional (utility) patent applications or $20 per figure for design patent applications.

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And after filing a given U.S. patent application with the USPTO (Patent Office) there may be various future costs associated with that U.S. patent application and/or with any U.S. patent(s) that may issue from that U.S. patent application.