Worried about the cost of full patent protection but still planning to secure your patent rights on a product? A provisional patent gives protections for up to a year, which is an excellent way to try out a new product or invention you have before committing to applying for a non-provisional patent with full patent protections.

Provisional patent applications are written without claims, which means that they can be done without the level of technical and legal expertise that a typical non provisional patent can – but, on the other hand, the lack of claims in a provisional patent application also allows for greater contestation and workarounds on your patent idea, allowing competitors to effectively steal your patent. Provisional patent applications should be written with care – only an experienced patent attorney can guarantee that your provisional or non-provisional patent applications are detailed and fine-tuned enough to give you effective patent protection.

As a provisional patent application is essentially the same thing as a regular patent application but without the ‘claims’ section, any of the patent examples in the patents section of the site will give you a good idea of what a provisional patent application should look like. Your patent will likely need to have the same level of detail as you see in these example patents, though the details will be specific to your own area of specialization.