Evan Carmichael breaks down four ways to patent an idea: file a utility patent yourself for under $1,000, file a provisional patent for under $100 to buy a year, hire a lawyer for $5,000 to $10,000, or find one who takes equity instead of upfront fees. DIY saves money but risks mistakes that weaken protection.
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How to get a patent without spending a lot of money. So I got a question from one of my YouTube viewers. Love you guys. John Mullum wrote in to say, I want to start with a patent. That means I need to hire a patent lawyer. It's going to be expensive. Is there a way to apply for a patent in a less expensive way? So let me give you some options. Okay. If you're going to, if you're going to, you know, you're worried about money, let me give you some options. Your first option is you could do it yourself. And if you're going to do it yourself, you can go for a full patent. Your fees alone are going to be just under $1,000. Those are just fees to the government. The other option is to go provisional patent, and that fee is under $100. And what that allows you to do is be patent pending for a year but at the end of the year, you have to go and file your full patent. So basically gives you a year to figure out if you can commercialize it or not. So the upside is, hey, it's not costing me a lot of money, right? $100 for a provisional patent, $1,000 for a full patent. The danger is you have to do it properly, right? It's like anything else, you know, um, whatever your business is, you know, if you are an electrician, And somebody says, hey, I'm going to try doing the electrical wiring myself. It's possible, but you're probably going to make a lot of mistakes. And so is it worth trying to do it yourself? Some people have gone and done it themselves. The ones who've done it effectively, you need to invest really a lot of time to educate yourself on how to do a proper pack, because at the end of the day, the pack's what's going to protect you. When you go out and you sell your product, sell your company, the patent is going to be what saves you. You want to get acquired and you have important technology, they're going to look for a way around the patent, right? They don't want to spend millions of dollars acquiring your business, they want to do it for cheaper. So the patent is the only thing that protects you. And if your patent is not solid because you made mistakes in it, then you're going to miss out on your big deal. So that's the risk. But you can do it yourself by spending $100 for the provisional or $1,000 for the full patent. If you go with a lawyer, it's going to cost you, depending on the lawyer, $5,000 to $10,000 in legal fees to get your patent done. The second option, and this is something that I looked into when I had my first business, was partnering up with a lawyer. And this is a little more creative, and it's something that no law firm will typically promote, but the idea is you give them either an equity stake in your business or a piece of any money that's made from the patent. And they'll only do this if they love the idea, if they think that it's going to make money, Ideally, why I love using a patent lawyer is I want my lawyer to help give me connections, right? It's like you don't bring on an angel investor just to try to— just to give you money. You want an angel who's gonna give you connections and ideas and resources, right? If I'm hiring a lawyer, I don't want my lawyer just to give me legal advice. I want them to work at my business and give me some help, right? So a lot of the patent lawyers If you look at a bigger company, they may have clients who could use your patent, right, who could be potential clients or potential acquisition targets, right? They may look at your business and say, hey, this is such a great idea, I want to buy this company out. And so that's an advantage of working with a lawyer to help you get there. So if the lawyer really likes the idea, really believes in you, really sees potential, and potentially also has some clients within the firm who might be good fits for you, then they might come in on a win-win basis and not take any fees up front. I've structured a deal like that with my business, but again, it's something that no lawyer typically brings up front because otherwise everyone's going to be pitching ideas to them. So those are your options, okay? $1,000, do the patent yourself. $100, do the provisional patent yourself and advise you a year. To go out and commercialize and then go get the full patent. Number 3 is go work with a lawyer. It will cost you $5,000 to $10,000. And number 4 is try to partner up with a patent lawyer who loves what you're doing, can make some contacts for you, and gets paid whenever you win from the patent. I believe that's my tips. For those of you watching, you like the video, you can subscribe to the channel. I love my subscribers. Thank you for joining. You can support me by clicking on the link in the description and leave a comment below. Let me know what you think. If you've had challenges with patents, you can put it below. You want to share your experience, share it below. Or you have different questions for me, put it below too. I love seeing those come in. Your comments are awesome and they make my day every day. So thank you, and I'll see you soon.
