Speaker 1: It is possible to prepare and file your own provisional patent application. In this video, I'm going to show you how to do that step by step. Hi, my name is John Farrell. I'm a Silicon Valley patent attorney. Welcome back to my channel. A provisional patent application is a placeholder application. It preserves the filing date of your patent application for one year. And it differs in two important respects from a non-provisional patent application. First of all, it's very informal. It can contain misspelled words. You can handwrite it. You can include pictures and sketches and figures and scans. Really whatever you want. Take a picture of a back of a napkin. You can include that in your provisional patent application. It's a very informal document. The second important distinction of a provisional patent application is that it's never actually examined. There's no patent examiner that's assigned to look at it, to open it up, to perform a patent search to see if you've actually included inventive material inside of your application. And for this reason, we can file an informal patent application. We don't have to worry so much about the formalities, the punctuation, the spelling, and the perfection of our figures and drawings. Now, one thing that's important to understand is that if the patent is ever litigated, if your non-provisional patent is ever litigated, the courts may go back and take a look at the provisional application to determine whether you've actually included sufficient description of your invention in the provisional application. So we do want to include enough detail in the provisional patent application to show that we had the invention as of the filing date of the provisional application. Now, while it's true that a provisional patent application has no formal requirements with respect to how to prepare the application, I think it's important to have a framework, a solid framework on how to build the application just so you make sure you include everything that you need in order to prove your filing date. So the five elements that I suggest, number one is a strong inventive title, a descriptive title. The second element is a summary of your invention, followed by number three, which is a description, a more detailed description of your invention. And then finally, I suggest putting in a simple claim, a patent claim, a plain English patent claim that describes the novelty or lists the novel elements of your invention. And then finally, and perhaps most importantly, in a provisional patent application, it's important to include figures and drawings and sketches and photographs, if appropriate, of your invention. And I'm going to describe each one of these in more detail. Every great invention deserves a patent with a great title. Take some time in thinking about your title, not just some broad collection of generalized words. If you have three patents on a dog leash, and each of the individual patents is entitled Dog Leash, Dog Leash, Dog Leash, well that really tells you nothing, you can't distinguish them. Better to have a title, something like Dog Leash with Integrated Ultrasonic Whistle, or a smartphone app for color matching ties, neckties and shirts, or for example, a golf club with a whiskey reservoir in the shaft. These are titles that you can read and understand and get a sense of what the true invention is that's being described and that later will be claimed. Now, not required for a provisional patent application, but I think very helpful is to have a summary of the invention. This is just a plain language summary of what the invention is about. It tells the reader generally what to expect in the invention, what's the point of novelty, what's the point of the invention. For example, a dog leash that has an ultrasonic whistle. The whistle has four tones and you can train the dog on some combination of the tones. How to construct the leash with the whistle, how it's constructed, how it's assembled, and then how you use it. Just a short summary of the invention, it might be a few sentences or a paragraph or two. The next section is the specification. Again, this is a provisional application, it can be informal. There's no exact requirements as to what the specification contains, but what I like to do is I like to discuss the figures. I like to have an outline containing my figures or drawings and I like to talk generally about each of the figures. For example, my invention might be a smartphone application that allows me to take pictures of my shirts and my ties and it helps me match the ties, the colors in the ties with the hues of the shirts. Some people have difficulty with colors, picking out and distinguishing between certain shades of colors. And also in matching colors, what colors go together, what ties go with what shirts. So my application, my smartphone application will help people select ties that go with a specific shirt. For example, in my application, I'll have a camera module somewhere in the block diagram and there'll be a database that might store all my various shirts and also another database that contains pictures of all my ties. And then there'll be some kind of matching engine that compares the ties with the shirts and once I pick a shirt that I like, it will then provide me a list of the various ties that might be appropriate to wear with that shirt. But you get the idea, the point is that have components in your application that describe the various functional units, how they work individually and how they work with each other. Now after discussion about the block diagram on how the system is built and how it's put together and how it works together within itself, I think it's important to talk about the process, the steps of using the application. So for example, step one might be take a picture of your shirts. Step two might be take a picture of your ties. Step three might be determine which shirt it is you want to wear that day or maybe determine which tie you want to wear that day. And then the next step may be provide a list of possible shirts to match the ties or ties to match the shirts. Anyway, you get the idea. The point is it's a step by step sequence of how you'll use the invention. Now in this invention of a shirt and tie matching application, we probably need to go into a little more detail about the algorithm that's used for matching the shirts and the ties. How does the app determine which ties go with which shirts? Well there might be a wide range of methods that the app uses. For example, it may just go with your own personal preferences. What have you worn in the past? Which matches have you worn in the past and enjoyed? It might actually, the app might go into the internet and look at catalogs and how certain ties are worn with certain shirts. What's popular? There may be a color wheel or some kind of color science that's used to match contrasting colors. But whatever it is, whatever the algorithm is that you use in your application to match shirts and ties, you should discuss it, talk a little bit about it, explain the flow and the process of how that matching algorithm works. Now the fourth element may be a little more controversial for a provisional patent application because it's not required. But I like to include a plain English patent claim. A patent claim that anyone can understand but that lists the elements, the important elements of my invention. For example, let's say that my invention is a windshield washing fluid for dissolving bugs on an automobile windshield. It's dispensed from a windshield washer and the windshield wipers come and they wash the bugs off of the windshield. This particular fluid is very good at dissolving bug parts. So my claim is going to be really simple. It's just going to be a windshield washing fluid for dissolving bug parts that contain and it might contain 10% water and 5% glycerin and 60% hydrofluoric acid and whatever else is needed to get to 100%. And it's just a list of components that would go into my patent claim to describe the basic essence of my invention. Again, not a true patent claim in the sense that the parts fit together nicely. I just would like to have a listing of what I believe is novel about my particular invention. And I don't know whether this bug washing fluid would work or not, but since hydrofluoric acid etches glass, maybe I would frost the glass and I wouldn't notice the bugs anyway. Although a patent claim is not required in a provisional patent application, I think going through the exercise of listing the important parts, those essential parts of your invention in a patent claim, in a listing of the elements, I think it helps organize your patent application and it helps it act as a check just to make sure you've included description on all the important stuff. Finally, the most important part, I believe, of your patent application framework for provisional patent application is the figures. It's said that a picture's worth a thousand words and that's never been more true than in a patent application, a provisional patent application especially. And remember that the requirements are informal. We can include handwritten drawings and screenshots, photographs, sketches, photographs of napkins where you've sketched inventions, PowerPoint decks, really anything that you want that you think will help describe your invention should be included. And this is a place where we can put a lot of inventive description without actually having to write stuff. You can just take pictures or add figures in lieu of having to write a lot of written description about your invention. Again, I would say be over-inclusive with respect to your figures and your drawings. Okay, once the patent application is completed, once you're ready to file, go to the USPTO website, USPTO.gov, and there's a portal for filing your provisional patent application. Now just follow the steps. It's very straightforward. If you would like me to make a video in the future about how to use the portal to file your own provisional patent application, please leave me a comment in the section below. If I get enough interest, I'll be happy to make a video on how to use the portal to file your provisional patent application. Now I have lots of videos on provisional patent applications in my YouTube channel. So just about any question you probably have on provisional patent applications is answered somewhere in one of those videos. But if you can't find it or you just have a unique question or a question that you'd like to have answered, post it in the comments section below. I'd love to take a look at it. Would love to read it, and I'll do my best to answer it. Okay, that's really all I have today to say about provisional patent applications. Again, if you have comments, put them in the comments section below. Otherwise, looking forward to seeing you next time.