Article: Do-It-Yourself Patents

This article in the April issue of the IEEE member's magazine "Spectrum" tells how "one inventor dispensed with lawyers". While not the route for everyone, the law does permit individual inventors to file patent (and trademark) applications on their own behalf -- a practice known as "filing pro se". One excellent point he makes is this: "Most patents to be held invalid were drafted by attorneys, so a lawyer is not a silver bullet against risk. Among other problems, attorneys can fail to understand the invention adequately and thus make claims that are too broad or too narrow." As an inventor myself, and being very familiar with patents and patent searching, this is a process that has its pros and cons. PROS:

• You can save a considerable sum of money. Most patent attorneys will charge in the $10,000 - $15,000 range to obtain a US patent. This will cover drafting the claims, writing the specification, handling the interaction with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and paying the filing fees.
• You can directly control the content.
• You can perform prior art and freedom to operate searches by yourself, using the tools at the USPTO website, or other sites, like Free Patents Online. This can help you determine if your idea (or one close enough to it) has already been patented. If so, you can save yourself the time and expense of filing an application only to have it be rejected. These searches are not usually done for an ordinary filing by an attorney; you can request them for an additional fee.

CONS:

• This is a time consuming process, and requires considerable attention to detail and deadlines. The USPTO has strict requirements about the format of drawings and claims, to name two.
• You should not only have excellent writing skills, but have a detailed understanding of how to draft claims. These are the legal meat of a patent, and must be written correctly in order to be enforcable. Remember that a patent simply gives you the right to exclude other people from using your idea; the legal term for their illegal use of your idea is "infringement". You must prove that they violated what you claimed about your invention in order to win a case; clearly, writing those claims requires both attention and skill.
• You may ultimately want or need a lawyer to work with you, and many of them will want to start from scratch using their preferred approach.
• If you want to file internationally, the workload increases dramatically, and an attorney's experience might be very welcome.

The article is very detailed and gives sound advice and good references. It is definitely worth considering filing patents by yourself, but the best approach might be to find an attorney who will work carefully with you.