A potential client will sometimes ask:
what’s your fee for filing a provisional patent application?
or sometimes the question will be:
what does it cost to apply for a provisional patent?
Or, by far the worst telephone call to receive in this general category is the potential client who cheerfully explains that he or she has prepared a draft provisional patent application, that the subject matter is “simple” and so the document should not require very long to review, and can I please just “touch it up” and file it with the USPTO? The caller makes clear that whatever bargain-basement price I would have charged to draft a provisional patent application, the caller expects me to quote a still smaller price to merely “touch up” the document.
When this happens, generally I politely refer the potential client elsewhere, but when pressed I will sometimes answer along these lines …
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