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A comment on Advice for Early-Stage Hardware Startups. Parent comment

Re:Advice for Early-Stage Hardware Startups by HeyLaughingBoy on Tuesday February 10, 2015 @04:58PM (#9030213)
When you realize that you will make more than the patent costs, plus the legal fees to sue an infringer.

Before then, I'd say you have better uses for the money.

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Re:Advice for Early-Stage Hardware Startups by spiritplumber on Tuesday February 10, 2015 @07:56PM (#9030958)
A provisional patent is around $400 and lets you slap Patent Pending on the manual, which makes you look more serious, at least.
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Re:Advice for Early-Stage Hardware Startups by ridgeguy on Tuesday February 10, 2015 @10:21PM (#9031406)
A provisional patent is $65 if you are a micro entity, $130 if you're a small entity. You have one year after filing your provisional patent to file a "regular" (utility) patent based on the provisional, and your utility filing gets the benefit of the provisional filing date.

See fee schedule, refs of micro & small entities, etc:

http://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/fees-and-payment...

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Re:Advice for Early-Stage Hardware Startups by HeyLaughingBoy on Tuesday February 10, 2015 @09:16PM (#9031234)
[shrug] So you just paid $400 for the right to sue someone. Still gotta pay the lawyers.
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Re:Advice for Early-Stage Hardware Startups by spiritplumber on Tuesday February 10, 2015 @09:23PM (#9031261)
It also makes you look a bit better to the sort of people who care about patents (The problem with lawyers is that they quickly get more expensive than siege engines, so their usefulness is limited).
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