Patent agents are taking advantage of provisional patent applications

It appears patent agents are catching on to the advantages of provisional patent applications. As reported in IPBlog last March, they not only offer the needed protection for an invention, but that they also extend the term of the protection by up to one year.

Dennis Crouch in PatentlyO has taken a detailed look at provisional applications to see if filers were taking full advantage of the one year rule to file the non-provisional application. He found 40% of the non-provisional applications were filed within one day of the 12-month deadline, and nearly 70% were filed within two weeks of the deadline. He also found that the percent of utility patents granted that claim priority to a provision application is rising, now over 33%.