I've been working on this project since January. Aiming to file a US provisional patent and the UK equivalent (UK IPO) this week. Working prototype is built, patent document is 60+ pages with 36 claims, and I've done a fairly thorough prior art search. The claims are deliberately narrow to navigate around the existing patents in the niche, and I'm reasonably confident in the position.
The goal is to plant a flag with the provisional, then approach VCs for pre-seed funding to cover non-provisional filing costs.
Some context on the competitive landscape: the niche has a bit of a graveyard of failed predecessors. A handful of companies tried to commercialize similar technology a decade ago, but they targeted the wrong market and never got commercial traction. The closest patent to mine commercially is owned by a company whose website hasn't been updated since 2005, and the underlying tech is about to be made obsolete by upcoming market changes.
Edit: The company I'm talking about is absolutely fucking milking this market, and will continue until the market changes happen.
I'm broke. I can self-fund the provisional filings, but I'll need investment to bring on patent attorneys for the non-provisional and any defence work down the line.
Two questions:
- If I file the provisionals myself this week and then raise to professionalise everything later, how badly can amateur mistakes in the provisional bite me when it comes time to convert to non-provisional? Is there a "you've made it salvageable" threshold and a "you've fundamentally screwed yourself" threshold I should know about?
- With a patent pending (provisional only, not yet non-provisional), can I commercialise B2B under NDA without compromising the patent application? Or does any commercial disclosure — even under NDA — start clocks ticking I should know about?
Any input from people who've been through this would be massively appreciated.