Prelude to the PPA…Chapter 1.
(Top award for the Most Boring-est Movie, letdown by the Seemingly Most Exciting-est Title)
As part of my action plan, I have to work on a series of steps to file the PPA, or what’s known as a provisional patent.
Once you file a PPA, you can start using the Patent Pending nomenclature in your work, your sell sheet which details your device/product to other companies, etc.
The PPA for a micro-entity (which I would be in this case), would be $65. You can read more about the fees and classification as an entity on here as well as the USPTO website.
Why is this all important?
With a PPA, I can have a firmer backing with my product with potential investors/licensees while fleshing out the technical details. In essence, PPAs are important because they act as a marketing tool, which is what Stephen Key, the founder of InventRight claims.
To catch up on the steps for a PPA, I’ve been reading Provisional Patents: Inventor’s Guide to Writing and Filing your Own Application by John S. Ferrell (2023). In the book, Mr. Ferrell, who is an experienced patent attorney breaks down the steps for drafting and DIYing your own PPA.
Here are the steps that I have gathered from the book so far. Just an FYI — I am not laying everything out :
Step 1. Find out if any other, similar patents exist.
Step 2. Write the description requirement
Step 3. Write the enablement requirement (break the specification into two parts)
Step 3a. What are the components required?
Step 3b. Process to Build
Step 4. Come up with the Title of the Invention
Step 5a. Field of the invention statement
Step 5b. Description of related art section
Step 6a. Brief Summary
Step 6b. Abstract of the Invention
Step 7a. Brief Description of the Drawings’
Step 7b. Detailed Description of the Drawings’
These are primarily the components that need to be prepared before sending out the application. The checklist of components, detailed on Page 119, is seen below:
Now that I have listed out the steps I need to work on, let’s start from the top…
Step 1: Find out if your patent is novel
An excerpt from the text regarding this step is as follows:
This novelty of invention requirement bars inventions from being
patented if the invention is described in a printed publication anywhere in the world more than one year before the application is filed, the invention cannot be patented. — John S. Ferrell, Provisional Patents: Inventor’s Guide to Writing and Filing your Own Application.
A quick Google Patents search can help you determine whether your idea is novel. From there, you can export the results and filter through Excel to find for any similar keywords to your idea.
Stay tuned — I’ll be talking more about my journey with Step 1 in the upcoming days. Thanks for reading!
