Patent Attorney and Founder
There’s a guy on YouTube calling himself a “patent guru.” He says that if your goal is to license your idea, a simple provisional filing is all you need. He claims a full patent is a waste of time and money.
I don’t agree. Not even a little.
And I think I know who he is, but that’s not the point. The real issue is this: if you want to license a patent, you need an actual patent.
A provisional filing won’t get you there. It’s only a placeholder. It’s not examined. It doesn’t give you rights. It doesn’t even get you a patent number. You could file a provisional that says, “Hi, I’m JD,” and the system would still give you a filing receipt. It wouldn’t mean anything, of course, but that’s how loose the rules are for provisional.
A real patent, what most people call a “full patent”, comes from a non-provisional application. That’s the one the USPTO examines. An examiner runs their own search, checks your claims, and if everything looks good, sends a notice of allowance. You pay the fee, and that’s when you get the legal rights people license.
Sure, some companies will talk about deals while the non-provisional is still pending. That can happen. But the key word there is pending. It’s still part of the process of getting to an issued patent.
The part that worries me is when people say “provisional patent.” There is no provisional patent. Only a provisional patent application. And it’s meant to be simple. It’s great for early-stage founders because you can describe your idea, include rough drawings, and get a filing date. That filing date matters because we live in a first-to-file system now. Filing early helps protect your place in line.
But again, you don’t get rights with a provisional. None.
So, bottom line: filing a provisional can be smart. Filing only a provisional and expecting someone to pay you for it? That’s not how licensing works. To license a patent, you need to pursue the actual patent.
I disagree with the guru on this one.