The Ideal Time To Submit A Patent Application

You should file for a patent as as soon as possible before presenting your idea with the public. If you expose your discovery to the public before filing a patent application, you must do so within 12 months of doing so.

As Soon As Possible

To secure the oldest filing date with the US Patent Office, the first rule is to prepare your application as soon as you can. In the United States, where the patent system is known as “first to file,”. Whoever files a patent application first will be first in position to possibly get a patent. If you wait long, another person might apply for a patent before you.

Before Exposing Your Idea To The Public

So, without such a mistake, file for a patent before showcasing your creation to the public. If someone files a patent application earlier than you after knowing about your idea, they may be able to get a patent for it. Therefore, before showing off your concept to all of your friends or uploading it on YouTube, submit a patent first. Even if it is a less costly provisional patent.

Within A Year Of Making Your Invention Public Release

But you must submit a patent application within a year after making your creation public if you haven’t done so already. And haven’t yet made a public declaration of it. You face the risk of being unable to secure a patent for your idea if you don’t. Strange, yet the law requires it! I’ll use one as an example. Imagine that you create a brilliant invention. And try to collect money for it on KickStarter without first submitting a patent application. You have declared your innovation public from the time you listed it on KickStarter.

A 12-month window of time starts to run out on that day. If you want to try to acquire a patent, you must submit a patent within a year. Your own releasing of the information may be used as prior art against your own patent if you submit a patent after the 12-month period has passed. In our case, the US Patent Office may use an image of your own KickStarter to refuse your own patent application if you submitted it a little more than a year after your promotion.

Therefore, you should submit a patent within a year of making your invention publicly known. The patent application does not, although, have to be a complete non-provisional patent application that demands 20 years of patent protection from the US Patent Office.

To fulfil the requirements, you could submit a provisional patent application within a year of making your invention public. This is because to ensure that your non-provisional patent maintains the provisional patent application’s filing date. You must change that provisional patent into a non-provisional patent application before the provisional patent expires.

This is because a provisional patent needs to be changed into a non-provisional patent before the provisional patent expires. Because to maintain the date of the provisional patent.

You miss the date of the provisional patent application, which was made within 12 months. And also, if you file a provisional patent within that time frame but allow it to expire without changing it into a non-provisional patent.

The US Patent Office may therefore reject any future patents you submit as they were submitted after the 12-month deadline. In conclusion, the simplest thing to follow is registering a patent before presenting your idea.

However, if you expose your invention to the public before submitting a patent, do it immediately and submit the application no longer than 12 months after the day you performed so.