Patent
More About Patent
When preparing provisional patents themselves most inventors or companies prepare poor quality patent specifications that include a multitude of legal, technical and formatting errors. These applications very often may need to be used as a basis for an international application or relied upon for support to sustain later filed patent claims.
In every case we have seen (yes – every case), the self filing of patent applications has resulted in the rights of the inventor being lost, the rights not being commercially viable or the patent costs ultimately being more expensive than using a patent attorney in the first place. Because the patent is of poor quality, it is of little use for licensing, selling your invention or providing any of the patent rights that an inventor should be entitled to.
In addition, under the new Australian patent laws it is difficult to add information to a complete patent application. Therefore, it is difficult to “fix” a self filed patent application and in most cases the inventor ends up empty handed after having paid sometimes many thousands of dollars in patent office fees.
So why do inventors (and some companies) still try to file their own patents? You could say patent costs come into it. However, the cost for a provisional patent with a firm like IP& is actually quite reasonable. If you are considering filing your own patent, then please contact us for a complimentary discussion.
