Let’s talk pricing for patents. We’ll provide an example budget for getting and maintaining a U.S. patent for a hypothetical tech invention. Then, we’ll break down the factors that influence the cost to get a patent. We’ll answer key questions about what drives patent cost up or down, and what makes the cost of getting a patent expensive or cheap.

Even though each case is different, it is possible to budget for getting and maintaining a patent in the United States.

Before We Get Into Pricing . . .

There are two things you need to understand before considering what a patent costs: how law firm pricing works and how the process of getting a patent works.

Quick Primer on Law Firm Cost

You’ll see most legal matters billed on one of three different bases: contingency billing, hourly billing, and flat fee billing.

• Contingency billing is where the law firm is paid a percentage of damages awarded in a case. No law firm will offer to get a patent on contingency because there are no damages involved.
• Hourly billing is where the law firm is paid based on an hourly rate, per attorney or a blended rate, multiplied by the number of hours worked (usually measured in 1/10th of an hour increments). This is the most common form of legal billing.
• Flat fee billing is where the law firm charges a set price for a set scope of work, or a phase of a scope of work. They are are best used for projects where the process is definable, like flat fee patent prosecution.

Check out this video if you want to learn more about these and when they’re used broadly for IP legal services. Now, let’s get into what drives patent cost up and down.

How To Get a Patent

I’ve written quite a bit about the process of getting a patent, so you can check out one of those posts to learn the details. Let’s say there are five phases in the life of a patent:

1. Exploration. You’ll share the invention with your patent lawyer, who will do some initial due diligence to understand the invention, review eligibility, and put together a plan for patenting the invention.
2. Application. Once the “go” decision is made, your patent lawyer will write claims, a specification, and an abstract, create drawings, and file the application.
3. Examination. The patent application will then advance through one or more prosecution cycles, receiving “non-final” or “final” office actions. Most applications receive 1–3 office actions. Your patent lawyer will analyze each office action, and prepare and file responses with arguments or amendments.
4. Finalization. Once all of the claims are allowed, your patent lawyer will perform a final review of the patent application and pay the patent issue fee.
5. Maintenance. Finally, you must keep the patent active. The United States, like much of the rest of the world, requires additional maintenance fees be paid at intervals to keep a granted patent active.

Litigation, including enforcement and defense, comes into play during the Maintenance phase. There is plenty of literature out there focused on patent litigation, but in this post, we’re focused on the costs for a patent itself.

An Example Budget for Getting a Patent

To set up the rest of this post, let’s look at an example budget for an invention of middle-of-the-road complexity. For the sake of this budget, we’ll assume this is an original (not a continuation) application prepared and managed by a law firm and it receives two office actions before issuing as a patent. This example budget does not account for enforcement or defense costs.

What Drives Patent Cost Up?

Several factors can increase the cost of a patent application:

• Complexity of the Invention: More complex inventions require detailed descriptions and extensive claims, which can increase exploration, application, and examination costs. Expect a patent application for a complex system, electronics, or software invention to tend higher.
• Legal Fees: Hiring a patent attorney or agent to prepare and prosecute the application is the greatest driver of cost, even though most applicants may find it well worth it. Legal fees must be weighed against the value-add of having an experienced and licensed professional quarterbacking the case.
• Big Companies: If your company has more than 500 employees, you will have to pay “Undiscounted” government fees to the USPTO. This affects nearly every fee from filing of the application through maintenance of the patent.
• International Filing Strategy: If you plan to extend your patent application to multiple international jurisdictions, you will incur costs related to retaining foreign counsel and foreign government fees. Some of these costs can be delayed with a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application.

What Drives Patent Cost Down?

Conversely, several factors can help reduce the cost of a patent application:

• Provisional Applications Before Portfolio Triage: If your company is less sure of the value an invention will add to its IP portfolio in the long run, a provisional patent application may be an advantageous way to secure the ability to later file a full patent application if you decide you do want to protect the invention. Filing a provisional patent application can be less expensive initially and gives you a year to file a full application. A provisional patent application can be expected to cost from $3,500–$7,500 in total, and will usually afford a head-start (and attendant discount) on a later-filed full application.
• Small Entity and Micro Entity Status: The USPTO offers reduced fees for small entities (e.g., small businesses) and micro entities (e.g., individual inventors with limited income). For example, in 2024 small entities pay $664 in aggregate filing fees whereas undiscounted entities pay $1,820.
• Electronic Filing: Filing electronically can save on non-electronic filing fees. The USPTO charges an additional $400 for non-electronic filings.
• DIY Applications: Drafting and filing the application yourself can save on legal fees, though this is generally not recommended due to the complexity of patent law that you need to know to have a shot at success. A do-it-yourself application can cost as little as the USPTO fees.

Beyond what drives cost up and down, there’s also the question of what makes patents expensive or what makes a cheap patent. If you’re researching the cost to get a patent for a startup, you might find quite a bit of variation (if you can find pricing at all). You might find pricing all of the way from $100’s plus filing fees to $10,000’s.

What Makes Patents Expensive?

Patents can become expensive due to several reasons:

• Not Having a Strategy. If you don’t have a strategy for your IP portfolio, you’re running the risk of wasting effort in a direction that doesn’t add value to the company. When you have an IP strategy in place, decisions surrounding IP become significantly easier, and you’ll waste less time and money.
• Using a Big-Market Law Firm: Law firms in large legal markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or San Francisco naturally need to charge more in fees to cover both the cost of doing business in those markets and their attorneys’ and staff’s the cost of living. Patent attorneys can prepare and file U.S. patents from anywhere in the United States for any client in the world.
• Omnibus Applications: Sometimes an applicant will want to cram as much subject matter as possible into a single patent application. While you can still only patent one invention at a time, this kind of “omnibus” application can be used to secure a filing date for multiple claimed inventions. This can make the first application expensive, but tends not to save too much money over the life of the applications and patents.
• International Protection: Seeking patent protection in multiple jurisdictions adds to the cost due to additional filing, translation, and legal fees. If you’re protecting your invention in jurisdictions where you don’t expect to have competitors, in which you don’t expect to have competitors, this may be expense with little ROI. This is one of the reasons to regularly review your IP portfolio and cull the applications and patents that are not advantageous for your company to prosecute and maintain.

What Makes Patents Cheap?

On the flip side, patents can be cheap in cases where there is highly-constrained work done by the person writing and managing it. For example, the factors that can cause a patent to tend toward cheap include:

• No Counseling or Recommendations. Some attorneys will merely report on what is happening in the case, without translating it out of the highly-technical terms of the patent law, without explaining it, and without recommending what to do next. If you’re a sophisticated player when it comes to patents (like in-house IP counsel), this might be acceptable, but for most startup clients, this just creates more questions.
• Over-Constrained Scope. Get specific with your patent attorney on scope of work, and you might find out that there are very tight boundaries on what they’ll do during your patent project. While scope limits are essential in any legal project, sometimes the constraints are very tight and could hurt you in the long run. To show how bad this can get, as an example, most “X is not a law firm” online legal service providers impose page limits and claim limits on patent applications. I’ve even seen a limit as low as 5 pages (!!) for a specification for a software invention. In my experience, it’s simply not possible to write a quality—or even legally sufficient—specification that short. Keep in mind too the “X is not a law firm” company is not subject to attorney ethics and malpractice rules. If a law firm imposes that kind of page limit on your patent application, run away as fast as you can.
• Low-Quality Provisional Patent Applications. There are plenty of ways I’ve seen people file DIY provisional patent applications on the cheap. I’ve even seen companies file pitch decks as DIY provisional patent applications. While it might seem penny-wise to file a provisional patent application this way, it’s pound-foolish. Your provisional patent application is only as good as the support its contents provides for a later-filed full patent application. Plus, if your intent is to have your CEO/COO/CTO sign the application on behalf of the company, that’s stepping on a legal mine that could render your entire application worthless.

As you can see, there’s quite a bit that goes into the cost of getting a patent. Understanding these factors can help you better navigate the patent application process, figure out what kind of assistance you need, and manage costs effectively.

A Flat-Fee-First Model Built for Startups

Stake helps startup teams who are ready to build out their IP portfolio to take their company to the next stage of growth. We employ flat fees for most aspects of IP law, and we realize that not every patent case is the same. Click on “Contact Us” if you’d like to schedule a time to talk about your startup’s IP strategy.