Why I priced a patent at $4,000
Our full patent package was around $20,000. One call with a biotech founder, and one memory of being a student with no money, brought it to $4,000 for solo inventors and students.
tao ippricingfounders
October 8th. Less than a week after we launched the Tao IP website, I was on a call with a biotech founder.
He is a two time founder. He has a patent granted from earlier work, and a new invention with a patent pending. He knows this process better than most founders I talk to.
I wanted to understand price sensitivity. A legal service has a strange problem. Too high, and founders cannot pay. Too low, and it looks fake, like a scam.
He told me our pricing was about the market average. Then he told me how he did his own. He wrote the whole nonprovisional application himself. Then he hired a patent agent just to review it.
He explained how a founder like him thinks. Not a big company. Self funded. Some money, not a lot. Willing to spend three to five thousand dollars on a provisional and a nonprovisional, as a bet on the future. At that price, he said, a bootstrapped founder can give it a shot. You never know if a patent will be approved. So you take the chance, and maybe file several and build a portfolio.
Our full package was around $20,000, depending on the plan.
After the call I thought about my first patent. When I met Michael, I was a student. By the time we filed, I had just graduated. I did not have the money. As a startup founder, I was making only $2,000 a month. A patent would have cost at least $10,000. Five months of what I made, at the very low end. Michael, who is now my partner at Tao IP, filed it for me pro bono. I had a patent because of him. Without him, the cost would have stopped me.
That cost does not put a startup on an equal playing field with a big tech company. The company with a legal department files. The student with an idea does not.
So I picked a number between three and five. Four thousand dollars. One thousand for the provisional, three thousand for the nonprovisional. A package for solo inventors and students.
I want to pay back what Michael did for me. I want to give young entrepreneurs, students and scientists a shot. So the next morning, the package was on the website.