Provisional Patent Applications

Published by april at August 22, 2017

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A provisional patent application (PPA) is a disclosure of an invention, typically including drawings and description that describes your invention. There are no claims required, although you may file claims if you wish.

Drawings need not be formal
No background, summary, claims or abstract required.

Filing a PPA allows you to use Patent Pending, and starts a clock for one year to file a non-provisional application with all the formal requirements, including a set of claims (only one strictly required), during which the application will be queued for examination.

When the subsequent non-provisional application is examined, it will be treated, for prior art purposes, as though it was filed on the earlier filing date of the PPA.
If the PPA does not fully enable a claim in the non-provisional, then that claim will be treated as though filed on the later date of the non-provisional application.

The designation of “Patent Pending” that the USPTO allows you to use upon having filed a PPA is misleading, and leads to a great deal of misunderstanding.

You don’t really have a patent pending until and unless you file the non-provisional application within the one-year period.
The PPA will never be examined, and if the non-provisional is not filed, the PPA is discarded.

The creation of the PPA process is responsible for having spawned a billion dollar scam industry in which various operatives “help” you file a PPA, with little or no responsible oversight, encouraging you to believe that you are “protected” or “covered.” YOU ARE NOT.

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