Provisional Patents Posting for sale or partnership

Question

Can provisional patents be listed on the site

Answers: 2 public & 0 private

25da12c4d3
Patent Attorney

As Mr. Weinreib mentioned, there are no "provisional patents," merely provisional patent applications. I am not aware of any legal restriction against you posting the content of your provisional patent applications on a website to solicit investment or partnership, however I am very suspicious about how effective that strategy might be and would generally caution against do so.

Your provisional patent application is not publicly accessible (at least immediately) and you are not earning any competitive advantage by making it so. Remember: you are potentially years away from having any patent protection for your technology, even assuming your technology is patentable subject matter and patentable over the prior art. The disclosure of such proprietary information, even in the context of joint venture, entity formation, or other transaction, would normally be pursuant to non-disclosure or other restrictive covenants designed to protect you.

It is one thing to display your product / service incorporating the technology, and another to have a .pdf of the provisional application available for your competition to see. Nothing prevents them from taking your concept, improving it in novel and non-obvious fashion, and obtaining their own protection.

It is advisable to speak with a patent attorney in private to review your larger IP and business goals.

Steven weinrieb
Patent Attorney

Provisional patent applications - there is no such thing as a provisional patent - are intellectual property, and as such, you can do with them whatever you want. While the USPTO has a duty to maintain provisional patent applications secret until, for example, a non-provisional or PCT patent application is filed and published, I believe that the inventors have a right to publicize their provisional patent applications as they may seem fit.

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