Hello and welcome to the Patent Pending Made Simple podcast. I'm your host, Samar Shah, and with me on the line is Jamie Brophy. Jamie, how are you?
Hi, I'm good
samar. How are you? I am doing all right. I think we recorded an episode last week about the different stages of the patent process and what everyone can expect. And we talked about pricing a little bit last week.
But I was hoping that we could record a follow on maybe a short podcast episode about the pricing by itself Because it can get a little muddy when we're going through all the different Options and trees of what could happen in a patent application, maybe we can just keep it simple and give people a price expectation so that they can get into the patent process with an understanding of the cost. Yeah,
I think that's a great idea. I know we definitely talked about how expensive it gets for international patents, but I don't think we really talked about the price for each stage. So I think that's a great idea.
Great. So I'll start this one off. And I would love to get your input on this, but, if you're going to file a provisional application, I think you should budget between three to 5, 000, usually, depending on the invention. For a non provisional application, you typically want to budget seven to 10, 000, depending on the invention, and then, if you get a rejection from the patent office, you should budget anywhere from two to 4, 000 for responding to that rejection.
And then, if you get your patent allowed, there are some additional fees there. Jamie, how is that for a general kind of cost expectation or pricing expectation?
Yeah, I think that sounds about right. And, there's a, there's quite a range because it really depends on the complexity of the invention. It depends on how many different embodiments or permutations of the invention you have. So there is quite a range usually, but yeah, those prices sound reasonable to me.
Great. And then the timing piece of this for the cost is if you were going to start with the provisional, I would say budget three to 5, 000 for the provisional on day zero. If you're going to convert that into a non provisional, I would say budget anywhere from six to 10, 000 for the non provisional on day 365 or year one. And then typically you get a rejection 18 to 24 months after the non provisional date.
So year three or four budget about anywhere from 2, 000 to 4, 000 for your first rejection. And then if there's a second one, this would be four and a half years or so from your provisional filing date, another 2, 000 to 4, 000. So, hopefully that gives you a timeline along with the cost as well.
Yeah, and you know what just occurred to me? We did talk about the fast track application at the provisional stage and how there's an extra cost associated with that. Can you talk about the extra cost for fast tracking your application?
Yes. So, the fast track fees, we as the attorneys, we don't charge anything extra for that. I don't know if that's true for all attorneys, but there's a U. S. government fee that you had to pay to fast track your application. And that's going to be about a thousand dollars if you are a micro entity or 2, 000 if you are a small entity. And then it's 4, 000 if you're a large entity. All right, Jamie, there's one additional thing that maybe we should talk about, which is the search process.
Can you give everyone a cost expectation with the search process?
Yeah. So for sure, before you file your non provisional application, we strongly recommend getting a search and a patentability opinion before you proceed with, all those costs with the. Provisional and office action responses and all that stuff. I would say the cost for a search is usually between 2, 000 and 4, 000. Again, it depends on the complexity of the search. And again, for the timing, recommend doing that at least two to three months before you file your non provisional application.
That's a good point. You will sometimes see a lower quote for the search process. I get bombarded with emails and commercials about searches for 400 bucks or 800 bucks by foreign practitioners. I always get a little nervous about that. I don't know what kind of protections I have with somebody in a different country if they decide to disclose or run with my idea. I'm not saying they're bad.
I think a lot of practitioners and inventors have had good luck with foreign searchers, but I always get a little bit nervous about my ability to have some recourse if something went wrong in that relationship. Yeah, that's
a good point. We here at our firm use professional searchers and they're all US based and we've been using them for a long time and they're pretty
reliable. I agree with that. Jamie, what about patent illustration fees if you're gonna file a provisional or a non provisional? Is that something folks need to budget for separately? For the
provisional, no. It's fine to have super informal drawings in the provisional. For the non provisional, yes, you typically need to have formal drawings prepared. And I would say that the preparation of the formal drawings is included in the price you quoted, Samar. But what do you think? Is there, do you think they're normally charged separately for the formal drawings?
Yeah, for us, they're all inclusive and are flat fees, but I would say majority of the practitioners I know will bill for the illustration separately beyond the attorney's fees.
Yeah. So the prices that we see for formal drawings, again, it depends on the complexity, it depends on the number of drawings, but I think they're usually around one to 200 per page of drawings is what I've seen. Is that what you've seen, Samar?
That's exactly right. For U. S. based illustrators, you are looking at 100 a page to 200 a page on the high end. Foreign illustrators will do it for typically 20 to 40 a page. So there is quite a bit of difference there, but we like U. S. based illustrators because you have the same kind of confidentiality concerns that you would have with searchers. But if cost is really an issue, that's something to think about as well.
Yep, that sounds good. I think that covers it all. Was there one more thing you wanted to talk about, Samar?
Yes, I get this question from prospective clients or folks who call into the office from time to time and they say, But why is the provisional costing so much? I saw on Google that some attorneys or practitioners could do it for 200 bucks or 300 bucks. What's up with that? And the answer is, I don't know. If you think about it, an attorney and a patent attorney in particular, we're typically billing 400 an hour.
So if somebody's quoting you 200 bucks for a provisional, I assume they're going to spend 30 minutes on your application, or more likely they're going to spend zero time on your application My guess is that those 200, 300 provisionals are you submit something to them and they'll just turn around and file it for you.
I don't love those because it potentially leaves a lot of claim scope and potentially is dangerous to your patent process as we have discussed in some of the other podcast episodes, Jamie. So I would think twice about those and make sure you're getting good value for money. We also have a kind of a shameless plug here, but we have a software tool that is also called Patent Pending Made Simple that uses AI to help you draft the high quality provisional patent application.
So if cost is really a concern, we encourage you to check out our software tool. If you're looking at some of these other ones that will do it for a few hundred bucks, I would try to understand what you're getting for those few hundred bucks. Yeah.
A few hundred bucks. Barely covers the filing fee. I don't know what the filing fee for a provisional is these days, but I think it's usually at least a hundred dollars,
right? Yeah, and maybe they're billing them separately. I just don't know. I just can't imagine getting much of anything done in 30 minutes or in a couple hundred dollars of time. Yeah,
definitely. All right. Well, this was a shorter one, but I think we covered everything as far as pricing for the whole process of obtaining a patent. I can't think of anything else that we missed. Do you have anything else, Samar?
No, I think this is good. We set out to have a conversation that's fairly short about pricing over the lifecycle of a patent. And I think we accomplished that. If you guys want to learn more about international pricing expectations, I would check out our last episode on the patent process from start to finish. And then if you guys have any other questions, let us know one way or another, and we'll get back to you or try to address them in a future episode.
Sounds good. Thanks Samar.
Awesome. Thanks everyone. Thanks for listening. Thank you for joining us on the Patent Pending Made Simple podcast. I hope you enjoyed our show. If you'd like to receive updates, view the show notes, or access a direct link to any resource, go to the episodes page on patentpendingmadesimple. com. To help others find our podcast, please like, share, and subscribe. Thanks again for tuning in. I look forward to having you with us next time on Patent Pending Made Simple.
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