Many of the phone calls that I receive are about how a small business can quickly protect its product prior to launching. The answer is almost always the same - file a provisional patent application.
I have mentioned provisionals in other posts, but just to reiterate, a provisional patent application is essentially a placeholder patent application.
You can file the provisional, receive a filing date, and then you have one year to file the actual patent application (this is called a non-provisional patent application). The provisional will not be examined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), but it does offer you some benefits.
Interestingly, the provisional patent application is only offered in the United States. No other country offers this option for protecting your invention prior to filing the actual non-provisional patent application. This is a huge benefit to small and medium sized enterprises.
The ability to protect your invention quickly and efficiently is really helpful because then you can test the market to see if there is interest in your product prior to spending a lot of time and effort on the non-provisional patent application. You can also disclose the invention at trade shows knowing that you have some protection.
Another interesting point is that the provisional patent applications are not published. So in some cases, you can file a provisional patent application and if you don’t ever disclose the invention, you could possibly keep the invention as a trade secret. This isn’t a typical strategy, but it is a possibility.
This does cause me to caution that in some cases, you might do a search to see if your invention is out there, but you won’t find anything that is only disclosed in a provisional for the reason above, in particular, the provisionals are never published.
For more information about how provisional patent applications can help you and your business launch a reduct, please join the Pirate Fight Club® Facebook group!