Filing a provisional patent -- a lawyer tells me $5,000.

For those of you who are still in school, especially in graduate school and want to obtain free law advice..I would suggest you go to the law school.

Most law schools will provide their students free advice about everything and will help you as long as you're a student. At my school, they will help you do paper work and find proper paper work to fit your needs. Granted you will be working with 3rd year law students, those 3rd year law students are managed by the law professors. Besides, it will give you an excuse to network with some lawyers. It's always a good thing to know good lawyers.

Call the law school up or email them to see if they have a program like that for students. You have to pump your resources to the maximus while you're a student because once you graduate, advice costs.

Cheerios

I've done a lot of patent filings, A good provisional looks like a real patent and can be turned into a patent with little hassle and not much more expense. The downside is that there is a lot more work for the lawyer to create a good provisional. A $200 provisional is a joke (just look at the form) and not worth the paper is written on...you need to have a lawyer spend time writing it up properly (esp. the claims). I'm not $5000 is the right price either though. In comparison a full patent filing will cost $15K from a good firm.

So a lawyer tells me $5,000. Google Adwords says as little as $200. Is it better to do it myself or get a cheapie provisional patent online? Can I hurt my chances of a full patent if my provisional patent isn't any good?

http://www.patent-patent.com/ has a $199 provisional patent service. Bad idea?

Patents are for boosting your valuation during funding/acquisition. Not doing either? Why not just keep it a trade secret.

check out nolo.com (no affiliation). I bought the patent book. If anything, it's cheaper than $200.