Speaker 1: All right, what's up guys? So today I'm going to be talking about how I got my first patent at 17 and also I'll be explaining how you can apply for your patent and get a patent on your product. So this is what we're talking about, a United States utility patent and I'm going to be talking about the way I did it and I'll be only talking about what I know. So I'll show it to you here, this is the patent that was issued, you can see there's a bar bell there and this is the product that it was issued on, the Snap Clips bar bell collars. So I'm going to tell you about how I got my patent, so the process that I followed and then I'll explain step by step what you would do to do the same thing. So I started off with not a lot of money, had like 200 bucks and I was in high school and had this idea of a bar bell collar that you could use to hold your weights in place. So I had made some prototypes, this is one of the prototypes here and I thought it was a good idea so I wanted to file a patent on it and I wanted to file a provisional patent because a provisional patent is basically a time holder and it says, hey, I'm here, I have this idea and I want to file a patent for it but I'm not quite ready yet. So filing a provisional patent sets your spot in line and then you have 12 months from that date to actually file a real patent that can protect your product or idea. So the way that I did it was I got some software online, it was $150 at the time, now it's only $99 for a year. So it's called Patent Wizard, put it up right here and you go on Patent Wizard, you download the software and you basically, it asks you a bunch of questions like extended response questions about your idea, how you make it, what it looks like, how it works, you fill in all that stuff and then, I don't know, after a couple hours of doing it, it prints out your patent for you. And at the time, I printed it out, I mailed it into the USPTO, the United States Patent Trademark Office and my spot was saved in line. Now what you'd actually do is you would make an account online, download it to your computer from the software and submit it online. If you send it in through the mail now, they actually charge you an extra $200 so it's not worth it. So now you would just do it online. Anyway, after I filed my provisional patent, I started developing the product more, making sure that there was a need for this type of product, making sure that people wanted to buy it and I did find that people wanted to buy it. So at that point, I said, okay, we need to file an actual utility patent on this product. I found some lawyers that were really nice and wanted to work with me and we went through a whole, I mean it was a couple months turning our provisional patent that I wrote, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend writing your own provisional patent but I didn't have another option at the time so that's what I did. So we took my provisional patent and then we turned it into a utility patent, filed it in the office and we actually got it. It usually takes between one and three years to get your utility patent issued. We filed for expediting the whole patent process. We paid $6,000 for it. It looks like it's only $1,000 to $2,000 now so it must have gotten cheaper and what that does is instead of waiting between one and three years, it gets done in one year. So provisional patent is one year and then you file your utility patent after that and in one year you have either an answer, yes, we'll give you a patent on this or no, we're not going to give you a patent on this because someone's already made something like this before. So after, I think it was like eight months or something, we had heard back and they said, we think that you could get a patent on this but there's some stuff that you would need to change in order to get your patent. So we made a couple tweaks to the patent and then it finally got issued. We paid some more fees and then we were finally issued a United States utility patent which protected the product and we were basically ready to launch and start selling the product on the market. So that's how I did it, super quick little story about it. There's a lot more to it but now I'm going to talk about how you can actually do it. So the first step in the process when you're trying to file your patent and the way that I'm going to do this is I'm going to tell you to file a provisional patent first. If you want to go directly in the utility patent, more power to you, you do that. But this is how I did it. So first you do a patent search, you could go on USPTO.gov and you search patent search and then you basically type in descriptive words about what your product, your idea or whatever you're trying to patent, what it is and you look it up. You look there, you see if anyone has made something or gotten a patent on something similar, look on Google, see if there's anything similar to what you're doing. If you find something similar to what you're trying to patent, you're not going to be able to patent it because someone's already thought of it before. In order to get a patent, you have to think of something completely new that no one has created before. It's never been publicly posted anywhere and no one knows how to do it. You're the first one that's making this thing. That's the big thing. You need to do a patent search and if that checks out and you don't find anyone that's made anything similar, then you can go on to the next step. You need to figure out what kind of patent you're going to file. You file your provisional first, then 12 months passed, now you're getting ready to actually file your real patent. What you need to decide is, is it going to be utility? Is it going to be a design? Is it going to be a plant patent? If it's a product or a new way to do something, it's most likely going to be a utility patent. So we're going to be talking about utility patents. Then where do you want to file a patent? Is it just going to be in the U.S. or is it going to be globally? I don't know about filing patents globally, so I'm not going to talk about it. I'm just going to talk about filing a patent in the U.S. It's going to be a non-provisional patent because you've already filed your provisional patent and the 12 months has passed and it's come time, maybe like 11 months has passed and now it's time to file your actual patent, your non-provisional utility patent. So then you need to decide, are you going to expedite it or are you not going to expedite it? If you expedite it, it's going to get done in one year. If you don't expedite it, it could still get done in one year, but it could take up to three years. So that's a choice that you're going to have to make, which comes with a fee. The fee is between $1,000 and $2,000, depends on if you're considered a micro entity or a small entity. Then who should file it? For the provisional patent, I filed that by myself. If you have the cash, it's probably better to have an actual lawyer file your provisional too. But if you don't have the cash and you don't have another option, file the provisional yourself. But once you get to the actual non-provisional, once you get to your utility patent, you can't file that yourself. I mean, unless you're like a patent lawyer, then you're not even watching this video. But when you're filing your non-provisional, your United States utility patent, you need to have a lawyer that knows what they're doing to help you file that patent. So they're going to take your provisional patent, they're going to convert it into a non-provisional utility patent, and for that, plus them filing it with the office, plus communicating back and forth with the patent office, you're going to get charged anywhere between $5,000 and $15,000 from start to finish. It could even be more than that. We paid $30,000, but now that I know more about patents, it should really cost between $5,000 and $15,000 from beginning to end of filing a non-provisional patent. So how do you file it? Your lawyer's going to file it. You're probably going to do it online, and you let your lawyers handle that. Then after some time passes, you can check the status of your patent. You can see if it's getting approved, if there's some issues. If there is issues, like we had some issues, then your lawyer's going to call the patent examiner and talk about what the issues are, see if there's any way that you can work around those issues and still get your patent issued. If you can't, then you're not going to be able to get a patent, but if you can work around some of those issues, then the patent examiner is going to agree. They're going to allow your patent, and then that's going to be it. You're going to get your patent application approved. At that point, you're going to have to pay another two fees. One of them is an issuing fee, and one of them is a publication fee. I'll give you a quick rundown of what all the fees are going to cost, just real quick right here. The provisional patent is going to cost anywhere between $70 to $140, depending on if you're a micro-entity, that's going to be the smaller number, or a small entity, that's going to be the big number. $70 to $140 for the provisional fee for filing the provisional patent. There's also a $99 fee if you're going to use Patent Wizard. It's like a $99 subscription yearly. After that, there will be, once the 12 months has passed, now you're ready to apply for your actual non-provisional utility patent. There's going to be, of course, the lawyer fees, which are going to be between $5,000 and $15,000 all in, so be prepared for that. On top, there's just a couple extra fees that you're going to need to know about. Paying the utility patent is going to be between $75 to $100, then the patent search fee that you're going to have to pay the patent examiner to look for similar patents is going to be between $165 to $330. There's going to be an examination fee between $190 to $380. Once the patent is approved, there will be an issuing fee between $250 to $500. If you're trying to expedite your patent, it'll be between $1,000 to $2,000 to get it expedited and get it done in one year. All in, patent fees alone, you're going to be in between $2,000 to $4,000 in patent fees, plus between $5,000 to $15,000 in lawyer fees. If you're in a patent, the total cost of your patent should be around the range between $8,000 to roughly $18,000, $20,000, all said and done, issued, assuming that you don't get tied up between there being a lot of rejections about your patent and your lawyer having to put in a lot of extra work to get your patent through the office. A United States utility patent is going to cost you between $8,000 and $18,000. That's like the bare minimum. Patents could go up way more. I paid over $30,000 for my patent, but now that I know more, I'm not going to be paying $30,000 for a patent. That's why I'm making this video, because if someone's trying to charge you $30,000 for a patent, that's crazy, unless they're really, really, really, really, really, really good. If they're really good, then maybe it's worth it, and if it's a really good idea and you want to really protect it well, probably worth it. So yeah, that's it. Let me know if you guys have any questions. I hope this video was helpful. I wanted to make it so that people know what it takes, what the process is going to be, and how much it's going to cost. If you guys have any more questions or want to know anything else, drop a comment, let me know, and thanks for watching.