Create Legal Iowa Patents Forms For Free

Yes, you can file a design patent application as an individual or as a business. Doing so might help you save money, since you won't have to pay legal fees. Be aware that if you file an application yourself, you might have to spend many hours researching and completing paperwork.

To file a design patent application for free, all you have to do is conduct a patentability search, gather the required materials, and apply to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Your application should include photographs and drawings demonstrating the innovation in your design.

A poor man's patent is essentially writing out a description of your invention and then mailing that written description to yourself. This postmarked envelope supposedly acts to create the date of your invention as the date this written description was postmarked.

A patent application is subject to the payment of a basic filing fee and additional fees that include a search fee, an examination fee, and issue fee. The fees vary with the type, content, and size of the application being filed and the entity status of the applicant.

The legal answer is, of course, yes. Thomas Jefferson filed his own patent application, as have many inventors over the last two centuries. The Patent Office was designed to be approachable and helpful to the individual inventor, especially in regard to provisional applications.

The Patent Pro Bono Program attempts to match inventors with registered patent agents or patent attorneys. These practitioners volunteer their time without charging the inventor. However, the inventor still must pay all fees that are required by the USPTO; these cannot be paid by the practitioner.