Ask HN: DIY Patent

Don't do it. The language used in patent applications is its very own special form of legalese. And hiring a patent attorney isn't all that expensive compared to your regular lawsuit legal eagles.

You might be able to get away with writing a provisional on your own (the key is to be as broad as possible) but I wouldn't try to do a full utility application without a lawyer.

Not suggesting you do or don't do it yourself, but you might read the book "Patent it yourself: your step-by-step guide to filing at the U.S. patent office" by David Pressman from Nolo Press. That has a lot of experience in those pages. He has done four other books on the same topic that you might also read.

I would start by determining what you goal of the patent is. Do you want it:

1. for marketing purposes (to advertise a product based on patented technology)

2. As part of a larger portfolio for future licensing

3. To protect yourself from another company from competing with you.

Your answer to the above should guide you on how much to spend on your patent.

Case 1, it doesn’t really matter how “good” your patent is a long as it gets issued. Your customers likely won’t bother looking. So maybe try to save so cash and file yourself.

Case 2: you want the patent to be as broad as possible. Plus include as many alternate but less optimal solutions. Get a good attorney who is familiar with your field. They may charge $3-600/hour but it ma be worth it. You can often get a jr attorney to do a lot of the tedious parts under the guidance of the Sr partner.

Case 3: patents don’t prevent others from infringing. They only give you the right to litigate. Would you be able to afford to litigate? That will cost way more than the patent itself. If the infringer is a large company, they can just litigate you out of your bank account. On this case? Why bother with even filing?

The process that works well for me is I write a detailed description of the invention and draft claims. Then hand it over to my attorneys to make better. They tell me my method works as a good data dump and that it saves them a lot of time.

Good luck!

Yes it is easy. The way to do it on your own is just copy the format and claims from other published patents. Don’t worry about plagiarism - patent attorneys certainly don’t in practice.

The bigger issue is finding all the relevant references. The easiest way is find a half dozen patents similar to yours and just copy the references. The examiner will find the rest for you.

Where you will run into problems is at the examination stage where the patent examiner will try to throw your patent out and/or exclude all your claims. You just spend a lot of time arguing with them and eventually you reach some sort of compromise.

One approach I do think is a good idea with self-patenting is to create a thicket of patents. Put in lots of simple, short patents with very limited claims (say 3 to 4). The basic idea here is to minimise the attack surface for the examiner and just try to get some through. If you are doing this yourself it is a much more cost effective option than if you are paying a patent attorney.

I should end by saying that unless the patent(s) are for marketing purposes it is probably a waste of time. No small business can afford to enforce a patent so they are rather worthless. They can have value to a large company in an acquisition situation so I guess that is one reason to maybe do this - in this case the thicket approach is more desirable.