FAQ
The questions inventors and business owners actually ask, answered the way I answer them on a call.
Every engagement starts with a fee agreed in writing before work begins: hourly, flat fee, or capped, depending on what fits the matter. Trademark registrations and provisional applications usually run as flat fees; prosecution and transactional work are often capped hourly. You will never see a number on an invoice that we did not discuss first. If what you want is a fixed price utility patent for a physical product, my companion firm Patent My Product, PLC publishes its pricing openly.
No. This is a transactional practice: securing patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secret protection, and the licenses and agreements that put them to work. I spent two decades in federal IP litigation, and that experience shapes every document I draft, but if your matter is headed to court I will say so early and help you engage the right trial counsel.
It depends on where the invention and the business are. A well drafted provisional buys twelve months of patent pending and a locked filing date at lower cost, which suits products still evolving or businesses still validating the market. A full utility application starts examination sooner. A provisional only works if it is drafted to support the later claims, which is how I draft them; a thin provisional is often worse than none. This is exactly the question a consultation answers.
A utility patent protects how a product works; a design patent protects how it looks. They cost very different amounts, take different time, and protect against different copying. Many products justify one, some justify both, and some are better protected as trade secrets or by speed to market. I will tell you which, in plain English, before you spend real money.
Maybe not. In the United States you generally have a one year grace period from your own first public disclosure, sale, or offer for sale to file. Most foreign rights, however, are lost the moment you disclose publicly without a filing on record. If you have already shown the product, the calendar is running, so this is a call to make sooner rather than later.
Yes. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are federal, so the work is the same in every state, and most of this practice runs by phone, video, and email regardless of geography. The firm's home is Columbus, Indiana, and I have met with hundreds of Indiana inventors in person over the years, including at their own facilities, and still do when a matter calls for it.
You describe what you have built and what you want to happen commercially; I tell you plainly what protection fits, what it should cost, and in what order to spend. Keep invention details general until we are formally engaged: the first conversation is free of obligation but it is not yet privileged, and I will tell you when we have crossed that line.
A typical utility patent takes roughly two to three years through normal USPTO examination, and roughly a year if expedited under Track One. Design patents commonly issue in about a year. Federal trademark registrations typically take around a year from filing to registration if examination goes smoothly. None of these are promises, examiner workloads vary, but they are honest planning numbers.
Both are my practices. Patent My Product, PLC does exactly one thing: flat fee, expedited utility patent applications for physical products on a defined schedule. Roberts IP Law is everything else in transactional IP: design patents, provisionals, PCT international filings, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, licensing, and any patent matter that does not fit a fixed mold. I will tell you candidly which firm fits your matter.
I do. There are no associates learning on your matter and no hand-offs. The person you book the call with is the person who drafts your application, answers the office action, and signs the work.
