Q: What is the average cost to get a provisional patent for an app idea?
A:
The filing fee that the U.S. Patent Office charges for a provisional patent application is $260 if you are a large business, $130 if you are a small business, or $65 if you are an individual inventor (but not too rich).
But the filing cost is not an issue. You need to have a good patent agent or patent attorney to prepare the application for you. That could be anywhere from a few hundred dollars to well over $10,000.
Why such a huge range? Well, a provisional patent application does not issue as a patent. To get a patent, you need to file a non-provisional patent application, which may claim priority to an earlier provisional patent application. Every patent attorney knows what needs to be in a non-provision patent application, and will charge accordingly. But with a provisional patent application the patent attorney can put down as much or as little as the inventor wants to; if it is too little, then the provisional application has limited use during the examination of the non-provisional patent application.
Some clients almost always file provisional applications, and some very rarely. I do whatever the client wants, but I generally advise my clients, that unless there are certain special circumstances, they should generally not bother with filing a provisional patent application.
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