Q: Provisional patents and future ideas
I was watching some of the tutorials on Youtube that mention that one should write what has been done (in the past) and what one has invented that would better the previous inventions and how will one's invention be in the future when writing one's provisional patent application. I currently have a developed iOS app with a new technology. The tech is novel and makes old remotely similar inventions obsolete. I had an extra novel feature to the tech for future (not yet released) smart devices. How should I put that in my PPA? Keep in mind that I am talking about a provisional patent. How would I put the future ideas in my PPA? Is putting future ideas bad for my PPA? Should I just simply disregard anything about future enhancements that "could" be added? I am not sure if the future devices will be released or not. Thanks.
A:
I assume that this is a follow-up question to my answer to your previous post. If I may answer your concerns:
(4) I think that the YouTube tutorial has misled you. There are many different ways of writing a patent application, but perhaps the Tutorial tried to teach it this way: in the Introductory (or “Background”) section one generally presents a handful of patents or publications that talk about the state of the technology today. At the end of the Introductory section a paragraph is presented that essentially states that “all these publications are great, but that none of these solve the very serious problems that people are facing; below I present my invention that solves those serious problems.”
(5) Based on the claims, you should write in the description what the invention is, how it works, what it does, and how it is better than what is on the market. But you do not want to write anything in future tense, or in aspirational language. If you’ve developed your invention to use for A, B, C, but you also think that it may be used in D, E, and F (but you have not tested it or developed any examples of that you can talk about), then you should write something like: “My invention is suitable for A; here are 5 examples that I’ve done. My invention is also useful for B; here are 3 examples of how my invention works in B. Further, my invention is good for C; here are 10 samples. Also, my invention is applicable for D, E, and F.”
(6) The provisional patent application should be drafted the same way as non-provisional application.
(7) You, really, REALLY, need to hand this over to a patent attorney who knows what he/she is doing, and not try to do this yourself. It is not only about writing and prosecuting the application; since your app will be tied to iOS or other technology, you will need advice on patenting strategy, out-licensing, etc.
Good luck!
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