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hello and welcome everyone to learn invent write calm TV show my name is Andrew Kraus I co-founded event write with Steven key over 18 years ago and we've been coaching and mentoring inventors ever since today we have patent attorney Damon Kelly I'm gonna put it this way inventor friendly patent attorney Damon Kelly not all patent Ares or what I call inventor friendly on the line welcome dammit hi Andrew thanks for having me so the topic today is basically what are some of the biggest mistakes inventors make when filing a PPA a provisional patent application Damon you've been doing this a really long time you've been a patent attorney long before even provisional patents were out so you've experienced this what are some of the biggest things that you see you know interestingly enough the big the single biggest mistake that people make on the PBA is the it paralyzed by the process in and it's really it's not a difficult process and what I mean by that is you know people say well you know what I write about what do I do how do I do this and then they end up writing a bunch of stuff it doesn't really get to what their patent application is about so I would say the first thing you know is don't get paralyzed by the by the process it's just simply telling your story and I like to tell people that just tell your story and sit down and just explain it as though you were explaining to your mom or your spouse or somebody that you were really excited to talk about your invention and if you do that you'll be 90% of the way toward writing your provisional patent application with a little bit of cleanup so that's maybe the first biggest in this day another mistake that people make is that use what I call trade names so for example like if you had a drain cleaner and you called it the de clogger that's that's really inappropriate in a provisional application what you want to say is a drain cleaning implement or something generic so that you don't get into trade names because trade names are nonspecific and they don't have inherent meaning in them so that's that's gonna be another thing and don't use your trademark either in your provisional patent application that doesn't help you at all so Damon what people are they're doing they're marketing fees to try to promote the product and do they sometimes put some of that stuff from their marketing piece associate or video into the PPA and it's not appropriate and it's okay to be kind of like boring in a PPA it doesn't need to be really fanciful if you will what's up if you want how to include yourself sheet with your PPA that's fine there's an appendix piece is it okay here's something else that helps explain what I'm doing with an EPA but when you talk about your your whatever it is you invent it you want to use generic and boring language and you want to call it the same thing every time you don't want to called a fishing pole one time a fishing stick another time a spear another time whatever you want to follow you don't you want to talk the same thing every time so there's no confusion about what you have in that in that regard the other mistake people make is they don't enable them they're provisional patent application and that's one of the two requirements for a provisional patent application is to enable it which means you know what's the secret sauce you've got to tell the secret sauce you can't hold anything back you got to put it all in the fridge you know patent application now you won't lose it it won't become public so you don't have to worry about somebody steal your idea because the provisional patent application is never examined so we need to fulfill the requirements pay the fee enable it and and get it sent off to the Patent Office okay so don't hesitate to be repetitive with with how you refer to the product it's okay it's not a marketing piece yeah exactly and I can read you know if you have if you have a small change you can just simply paste an entire paragraph to make the small change and add that to your provisional patent application so it can be as long or short as you want typically a good provisional is between three and seven pages with about three to five drawings that's typically what it is another mistake people make is they don't do drawings or photographs they think they can describe it in words and it's really true that a picture is worth a thousand words if you can put a picture down and somebody can understand it quickly then you've got it if you try to explain in words oftentimes if it's lost because what's in your head and what gets to the paper are often two different things and do you need word so then add to those pictures when you have the combination of the words and then you're referring to the pictures is that very helpful that's ideal that's the ideal situation in some cases a picture tells the whole story you show the thing and it's like it's fine but what you want to do is take the elements of the picture and name them number them and then name them in your specification and in the provisional patent application and that way you're taking a little bit of time to pick apart and show each component part that's really the ideal way to go about doing it now one last thing that I've heard you say many times is sometimes inventors are they're being too specific can you talk about a specific language versus broad language and I believe you recommend using both it's okay to be specific but then you brought it out so you don't box yourself in yeah so what thing people always do it I shouldn't say oh is that they often do is they say you know my invention is made out of polyethylene which is a polymer it's a it's a very useful polymer and but by saying that it's made of polyethylene you limit yourself to that virgin so what you'd like to say is my invention is made of polyethylene but it could also be made of metal it could be made of some other polymeric material it could be made of a natural material without limitation so you open up the possibilities for other people manufacturing in a different way in the same way you wouldn't say well I used a type in inch for the for the hinge to type in hinge of the hinge it does not come out I loose pins hinges at the hinge where the pin can be removed like in your doors like an entryway joy so you wouldn't want to say hey you know user type than hinter you would say I want to use a pivoting agent or I want to use a hinge mechanism something like that to sort of broaden and out and then finally you know don't limit your image to this in a particular color unless that color has a specific use for example red maybe inside some sort of reaction in an animal if that's the case than used colors but otherwise don't you don't describe your invention in terms of color great great tips Tim and thank you so much very useful patent attorney no no not patent attorney inventor friendly patent attorney Dave and Kelly thank you for coming on it's a pleasure all right everybody take care keep inventing we'll catch up with you on the next invent right comm TV show hi this is Steven key and I just want to thank you for watching and fit right TV we're here to save you time save you money and show you how you can bring your products to market through licensing so please subscribe down below click on the button and tell your friends thank you