There is no such thing as a “provisional patent”. Everyone knows this. Everyone except, it turns out, the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Yesterday the USPTO rolled out its new web site at https://www.uspto.gov/. If you click on “Patents” it brings you to USPTO’s new “Patents” page at https://www.uspto.gov/patents. This page, quoted above, has twenty-nine links. The eleventh link, as you see above, is “File a provisional patent”.
There is no such thing as a “provisional patent”. Until now, the term “provisional patent” was used only by fraudulent “invention promotion” firms. The invention promotion firm would scam the unwary inventor, tricking him or her into paying a large sum of money for the filing of a poorly drafted or worthless provisional patent application.
Old-timers in the patent profession recall a time when there was no such thing in the US as a provisional patent application. The US Congress enacted the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 (Wikipedia article). Effective June 8, 1995, it became possible for an inventor to file a provisional patent application. The application does not become a patent, but instead automatically expires in one year.
There had been scammy and fraudulent invention promotion companies long before June 8, 1995. But starting on June 8, 1995, the invention promotion companies had a rich new category of scam available to them. The unwary inventor could be tricked into handing over money for a “provisional patent”.
Every member of the patent community has, since June 8, 1995, been in the position of having to explain, over and over again, to independent inventors who had been scammed, that there is no such thing as a “provisional patent”.
Until now. In April of 2026, the USPTO (see quoted above) now tells the world that it is possible to “File a provisional patent”.
I think most patent offices, and indeed most large corporations and institutions, have “second pair of eyes” procedures in place for any major or highly visible change to their web site. No change is permitted to be externally visible until some second person checks it and signs off on it.
My best guesses are:
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- The new USPTO web site, released on April 24, 2026, was created by an AI, and
- there was no human “second pair of eyes” reviewing the new web site prior to its release, and
- the AI hallucinated the “provisional patent”.
What makes me say this is that I cannot imagine that any career employee of the USPTO would be unaware of the fact that there is no such thing as a provisional patent. Most career employees of the USPTO have spent their entire adult lives having to deal with scammy and fraudulent invention promotion companies. They have had to explain, over and over again, to sad scammed inventors, that the money they paid for a “provisional patent” had gone to waste.
From this it follows that there must have been no human “second pair of eyes” reviewing the new web site prior to its release, at least not from any career employee of the USPTO.
Today is April 25, 2026. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this to see how long it takes for the USPTO to correct its new web site to say something along the lines of “File a provisional patent application”.
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