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Rafael says this is my first idea, my first company; the patent is my first step. How do I plan from a budget perspective?
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Yeah, so yeah, it's a great question. There's certain steps to the patent process. And you really, the best way to plan is to look at it one stage at a time. So just like if you're in need of an important surgery, the first step is to have an x-ray done to see if that surgery is actually going to help you. So if you believe it will, that's fine. But go to a doctor; the doctor is not going to tell you until he does the surgery first. So if you have an idea that you think is unique, I would go to a patent attorney and have a professional patent search done first. So the budget for that, you're looking at about $1,500, because there are 10 million patents out there. And you want to have an attorney do the search because when a patent attorney does the search, we're not limiting our search to language. So for example, if your idea is a new type of pipe, we're not typing in terms like “pipe” because a competitor might have the idea patented, but that patent might be listed as a hose, and then you're going to miss you're going to miss that reference. So a patent attorney like myself, we do the search based on class and subclass. And then I provide a written opinion with the likelihood of success and the likelihood of you going forward and getting the patent granted, that's like a doctor looking at the X ray, saying, “Hey, you're a good candidate for this operation,” or saying, “Hey, this is extremely risky, and I don't advise going forward.” So when we do a patent search at my law firm, if I don't think you're going to get the patent, I don't advise you to take the next step. So you don't need to budget anything further. The big risk is inventors that start creating prototypes and spending money and building a website and doing all of this work without knowing if their idea is unique. So I would suggest, find out if it's unique first before you put time into it.