Provisional Patent Applications
uspto provisional patent application
Effective June 8, 1995, the US Patent and Trademark Office now accepts provisional patent
applications for purposes of establishing a priority date for inventions. Under the new system, one who
files a provisional application has a period of up to 12 months in which to file a formal application and
still claim priority based on the filing date of the provisional application.
4.051 Provisional Patent Applications
A provisional application must contain a specification and drawings, if necessary, but need not
include any claims. Also, an oath is not required. The provisional application must, however, be
accompanied by a proper cover sheet, which can be supplied by the Patent and Trademark Office,
identifying the attached document as a provisional application, naming the inventor or inventors, and
giving an address for any correspondence.
A provisional patent application requires significantly less time by an attorney to prepare and the
official fees ($150 as of 1 October 2001) are greatly reduced, compared to those for a regular patent
application. Provisional Patent Applications are not subject to substantive examination and a patent
cannot issue from a provisional application. If a regular or traditional Patent Application is filed within
one year of the filing date the Provisional Patent Application, the Regular Patent Application is given an
effective filing date, being the day the Provisional Patent Application was filed. A provisional Patent
Application can serve as a “constructive reduction to practice” of the invention and can provide certain
timely advantages relating to possible public use or sale bars, or as to published material that would be
considered prior art to the invention disclosed in the Provisional Patent Application. A Provisional patent
Application is likely to be of far greater value in supporting proof of conception of an invention, than
would be a document filed under the Disclosure Document Program Of the US Patent and Trademark
Office described in Section 4.03 above. One warning, upon filing a Provisional Patent Application is that,
if corresponding foreign patent applications are to filed that rely on a the Regular US Patent Application
for a priority date (i.e. the foreign application is given an effective filing date of the US filing date), the
foreign application(s) must be filed within one year of filing the US Provisional Patent Application.
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