Common questions, straight answers.

For patent prosecution before the USPTO — drafting applications, responding to office actions, and managing your docket — a registered patent agent is fully authorized to do everything a patent attorney does. The difference is scope: attorneys can also provide legal advice, file trademarks, and represent you in litigation.

If your goal is to secure and prosecute a patent, an agent with deep technical background in your field will often produce tighter claims and more technically precise specifications than a generalist attorney — at meaningfully lower rates. If you anticipate licensing disputes or litigation down the road, you'll want an attorney in your corner for those specific matters, though your agent can coordinate closely with litigation counsel when needed.

A provisional application is a lower-cost filing that establishes your priority date — the date that determines who got there first — without beginning formal examination. It expires after 12 months and never becomes a patent on its own, but it gives you a year to refine your invention, raise funding, test the market, and decide whether to invest in a full nonprovisional.

A nonprovisional is the application that actually enters examination and can mature into a granted patent. The key thing to understand is that your nonprovisional claims can only be supported by what was disclosed in the provisional — so a thin provisional can undermine your protection later. Filing a well-drafted provisional from the start is worth the investment.

These three roles are often confused, especially in startup contexts.

The inventor is the person (or people) who actually conceived the claimed invention — this is a legal determination, not an employment question, and incorrectly naming inventors can invalidate a patent. The applicant is the party filing the application, which since 2012 can be either the inventor or an assignee. The assignee is the entity that owns the rights to the patent — typically a company that has received an assignment from the inventor through an employment agreement or invention assignment contract.

In practice: your engineers invent, your startup owns (as assignee), and everyone's name needs to be correct on the paperwork from day one.

From filing a nonprovisional application to a first office action, the USPTO currently averages 18–24 months depending on the technology area — though some art units run longer. Total pendency from filing to grant, assuming the application is allowable, typically runs 2–3 years.

Applicants who need faster results can file a Track One prioritized examination request (for an additional USPTO fee), which targets a final disposition within 12 months and often delivers a first action in 2–3 months. Inventors who are 65 or older can alternatively file a Request to Make Special based on age — which achieves the same prioritization result at no additional USPTO fee. For startups on a fundraising timeline or approaching a product launch, Track One is often worth serious consideration.

After filing, your application enters the USPTO's queue and is assigned to an examiner in the relevant technology art unit. The examiner searches prior art and evaluates your claims for patentability, then issues a first office action — typically a non-final rejection citing prior art under §102 (novelty) or §103 (obviousness), or raising §101 eligibility issues for software or method claims.

You have 3 months to respond without extension fees (up to 6 months with fees). Your response argues against the rejections and/or amends claims. The examiner then issues either an allowance or a final rejection. From there you can file a Request for Continued Examination (RCE) to continue prosecution, appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), or pursue a continuation application. Most applications require at least one round of back-and-forth before allowance.

In almost every case, the company should own the patent — not the individual inventors. IP sitting with a founder personally creates serious problems during due diligence, fundraising, and acquisition. The mechanism is an invention assignment agreement, which transfers ownership from the inventor to the company.

If your employees or co-founders haven't signed one yet, that's the first thing to fix before filing anything. Many standard employment agreements and founder agreements include assignment clauses — review yours carefully. Once the application is filed, the assignment is recorded with the USPTO, which your patent agent or attorney can handle as part of the prosecution process.

The US operates on a first-inventor-to-file system, so timing matters. You have a one-year grace period after your own public disclosure to file in the US — but any public disclosure before filing permanently bars patent protection in most foreign jurisdictions.

The practical answer for most startups: file a provisional application before any public disclosure, investor pitch, trade show demo, or product launch. This gives you a priority date and 12 months of runway. If you've already disclosed publicly, you may still have US options, but international filing doors are likely closing fast. The best time to call is before you talk to anyone outside your company.

Patent costs come in two buckets: professional fees (drafting, prosecution) and USPTO fees. A provisional application typically runs $2,200–$4,400 in professional fees. A well-drafted nonprovisional utility application typically runs $6,600–$8,800, plus $800–$1,600 in USPTO filing fees for a small or micro entity. Office action responses add $1,500–$3,500 per round. Design patents are considerably less expensive — typically $1,500–$3,000 in professional fees with lower USPTO fees.

International filing via PCT adds another layer of cost. The honest answer is that a utility patent from filing to grant, including prosecution, typically costs $10,000–$15,000 — sometimes more for complex technologies or contentious prosecution. Fees are discussed transparently during the discovery call and a clear estimate is provided before any work begins.