What fees are involved in filing a patent and where to start?

Plan on spending between about $500 - $12,000+ to have a patent filed, depending on what kind of patent, what your technology is, and what kind of risks you are willing to take. You should start with a basic patent screening search that will cost between about $500 - $1500 and you should interview a few attorneys first to decide who would be best at helping you within your budget.

It varies all over the map. I'd figure about 8000-18000 for drafting and filing an application having moderate to complex technical subject matter in attorney's fees. You might find a patent agent willing to do these things for much less, but for a potentially valuable invention I would engage a patent attorney. To give you a frame of reference, I was a research engineer long before becoming a patent attorney and my own patents were drafted and prosecuted by patent attorneys. Of course you will find excellent as well as less able practitioners in any group, so your results may vary.

The answer to your question depends on a number of factors, including the type of patent application you are filing (provisional, utility, plant, design, foreign convention, international,etc.), what size filing entity you are for Patent Office fees (regular, small,or micro fee schedules), where you are filing the application (e.g., each search authority selected for your international patent application has a different fee), the size of your patent application, e.g., number of claims, number of pages in the application, etc, draftsman fees for formal drawings if needed, the billable rate or flat rate fees charged by your patent attorney, and whether or not you want to pay to expedite the prosecution of your patent application (US only). At the lower end of the spectrum of patent filing costs is the provisional patent application. Because there are no: formatting requirements, search, examination or publication fees and claims are not required, we could charge as little as $630 USD, including Patent Office filing fee for a small entity, to prepare and file your provisional patent application based on whatever document or description you provide. At the higher end you may be preparing and filing an international patent application with multiple embodiments disclosed, tens of drawing sheets prepared by a professional draftsman, with lots of claims, a specification exceeding 100 pages, with lots of inventors and levels of internal review before filing. Such a patent application may cost $25,000 USD or more not including Patent Office filing fees exceeding $5000. The other types of patent applications will fall within that range. We typically quote $5000 to $10,000 USD plus costs for preparing and filing US utility applications depending on the complexity of the invention and the number of embodiments you want to disclose. We would be delighted to quote you an estimate for your patent application and there are no costs associated with providing the quote. Additionally, initial consultations are always free at Eminent IP.

Figure a minimum of $2000 to $5000, and potentially much higher. The cost goes up if the invention is more complex or involves biology/chemistry (pharmaceuticals, genetic modifications, etc.)

Two sets of fees will be required - Patent Office fees (see www.uspto.gov) and lawyer or agent fees. The Patent Office fees are set by the government. The fees charged by you patent attorney or patent agent are set by them - and they vary greatly depending upon a number of factors, such as: The complexity and nature of the invention (chemical, biological, mechanical, electrical, computer-based, etc.; The amount of supporting information provided by the inventor; The amount and nature of the prior art - either provided by the inventor or obtained by searching; You should budget a total of about $10,000 to prepare, file and prosecute a patent application in the US. The cost might be less, but often the cost is more.