If what makes your product special is how it looks, a design patent is the cheapest, fastest patent you can get. Here’s what it protects, how to file one, what it costs, and how to actually enforce it.
Before you spend thousands on a patent, you can spend an afternoon finding out if someone already beat you to it. Here’s how to run a prior art search yourself using free tools — and how to read what you find.
Software, algorithms, and business methods live in a strange corner of patent law: sometimes yes, often no, and it rarely depends on what you’d expect. Here’s the one rule that decides almost every case, in plain English, plus where the law actually stands in 2026.
Patenting a physical product isn’t a single payment or a quick form — it’s a multi-year journey with distinct stages, each with its own cost. Here’s the real timeline from idea to granted patent, the steps in order, and honest dollar figures for doing it yourself versus hiring help.
A provisional patent application is the cheapest legitimate way to lock in a filing date and start saying “patent pending” — often for less than a hundred dollars in government fees. Here’s exactly what it does, what it costs, how to keep it cheap, how to file one yourself, and the 12-month deadline that trips people up.
Utility and design patents protect two completely different things about your invention — one guards how it works, the other how it looks. Picking the wrong one (or not realizing you might need both) is an expensive mistake. Here’s a plain-English breakdown of what each covers, what they cost, how long they last, and how to decide.
You built something clever in the garage, the workshop, or a CAD file at midnight. Do you actually need a patent to protect it? Here’s a plain-English, maker-first walkthrough: what a patent really buys you, whether your idea even qualifies, what it costs, and when you’re better off not filing at all.
Thinking about patenting your app? For most indie founders, a patent is the wrong tool — expensive, slow, and easy to design around, and a lot of software isn’t even patentable after the Alice ruling. Here’s a plain-language guide to what a software patent actually protects, the handful of situations where one makes real sense, what it costs, and the cheaper protections that cover almost everyone else.
One inventor, Stephen Thaler, spent years asking patent offices around the world a simple question: can an AI be named the inventor on a patent? Almost every answer was no. Here’s the DABUS saga in plain language — what the courts actually ruled, the one country that said yes, and what it means for you if you invent with AI tools.
A provisional patent application is the cheapest, fastest way to plant a flag on an invention and say “patent pending” – but it comes with a 12-month clock that trips up a lot of inventors. Here’s how it really works.