Provisional patents solve inventors' problems

Since the late 1990s, provisional patent applications have provided a streamlined and valuable patent application process that has solved a number of perplexing and expensive challenges facing new and established inventors. The recent changes in patent law have addressed a number of issues regarding patent applications by making the requirements for a provisional patent application quite different than those of a "regular" patent application. Provisional patent applications need only describe the invention adequately so that someone, after reading the application, can make the invention without undue experimentation. Accordingly, the expense associated with drafting a provisional patent application is typically much less than that of drafting a non-provisional application. Clearly, by taking advantage of a provisional patent application, an inventor is free to assess the viability of his invention for a limited time, without jeopardizing one's ability to protect the invention throughout the world. Even so, additional steps must be taken to perfect an inventor's patent rights since a provisional patent application has only a one year life span, it is not critically examined by the patent office and merely acts as a place holder by reserving the inventor's filing date.