You might be wondering what the difference is between a provisional patent application and a utility patent application.
You can and should be doing everything you can to market the product and/or seek investors or a company to sell your invention to. The purpose of the provisional patent application was to “stop the clock” and get a filing date at the US Patent Office. Anyone that files after you will be second in line and you will receive priority. However, the provisional patent application only provides a priority filing date for information actually disclosed in the write-up and drawings. Therefore, you should limit your disclosure to only that material. If you have added anything and want to be able to disclose that, then you should file the full utility patent application early so that you can obtain a filing date for that prior to your disclosure.
In preparing for the full utility patent application, it is important to keep in mind that we can add any disclosure you like and even completely rewrite the provisional patent application. But, as noted above, you will only receive a priority filing date for that information which was actually disclosed in the provisional patent application, and any new matter will receive the later filing date of the utility patent application.
In that regard, you should certain gather as much data as possible, consider any design changes, improvements, upgrades/add-ons, and all other aspects to future proof protection of your invention. Once the full utility patent application is filed, we can no longer add anything without having to file a new patent application which may not even be possible depending on the circumstances.
You should always seek the advice and help of an attorney when preparing either a provisional patent application or a utility patent application.
