Evan Carmichael explains provisional patents for a baby-blanket car-seat cover. File before selling, get one year to test the market, then decide which countries to pursue full patents in. Enforcement costs money, so use that year to prove the idea is worth protecting.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to be answering a question from one of my readers, Becky, who has developed a baby blanket car seat cover that is unique but very simple to make. And she's wondering if she should go apply for a provisional patent or not and what protection that gives her. So Becky, I'm not a lawyer, so you should definitely go talk to one, but here's my understanding and hopefully it can help you. First of all, to apply for any kind of patent, you have to make sure that the product is not yet commercially available. So you have to do it before you start selling your product. If you've already started selling your product, then you can only file a patent on the changes that you've made, so new improvements to it. Second, a provisional patent gives you 1 year international coverage for your idea across every market, and I believe in some circumstances you can also extend extend it to another year. But you basically have that first year to figure out, is my product commercially viable or not? Because a provisional patent is a lot cheaper than going for a full patent. So once you've had that year to figure out if you're going to go for the full patent or not, you have to decide then which markets you want to get a patent in. So each country has their own patent process, and there's a cost involved to get a patent in each country. So that can get very expensive to have full international coverage because you have to apply for so many different individual patents. At the end of the day, you have to figure out, is it worth the time and cost to get this thing going? Because people can still copy your idea, and as part of your patent, you have to explain exactly how you create your product, so it's really easy to rip off. For you as an entrepreneur, you would then have to go and enforce the patent, and that's usually the biggest stumbling block for a lot of business owners. People will still copy your idea, but you have to then go hire lawyers to enforce it and say, 'You're copying my patent and you're not allowed to do this.' So usually it's not worth it for the entrepreneurs to have that kind of expense to go and hire lawyers to do it. But you do have the 1-year provisional patent status for international coverage that hopefully gives you some time to figure out if your product's going to sell or not and if it's worth taking that next step. So hopefully that helps, gives you some ideas to work with. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below, and I'd also love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you want to leave a comment. And stay tuned for the next episode.
