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Provisional Patent Application	Utility Patent Application	Design Patent Application	Patent Research
Low-cost, gives you fast "Patent Pending" & 1 year to file for a Utility Patent.	Best quality, protects useful structures, functions, & and methods. from $1400	Protects an article's appearance from being copied.	Before investing time and money, we research your idea's likely patentability.
Do-it-Yourself $29.99-$49.99	Request a Quote Free Consultation	Great for Artists, product designers, etc.	from $249
Do-it-yourself with Our Help $99-$500
We draft/file your PPA from $700

why choose Bay Area IP?

What is different about Bay Area Intellectual Property Group?
What kind of patent firm is best for me?
How is Bay Area IP's low overhead to your advantage?

What is different about Bay Area Intellectual Property Group?

Simply put, Bay Area IP's philosophy is to provide top quality service to our clientele at a very competitive cost. Unlike the vast majority of IP firms that have to tradeoff quality for price to be profitable, our lower cost structure and streamlined process afford Bay Area IP the luxury of spending the time it takes to ensure a happy client and a quality job done. Our practice is all about building solid relationships that efficiently align our ever-growing capabilities to our client's needs. The founder of Bay Area IP brings to the firm a unique set of capabilities that is unmatched in IP the industry. Our competitive advantages include the following:

• Client Satisfaction is our number one priority- We work harder!
• Our client is encouraged to be involved at each step of the process
• We have a firsthand understanding of the unique IP needs of Individual inventors, small business, law firm, and Fortune 500 companies
• The founder is an experienced inventor (3 patents awarded, 7 pending), systems/design engineer, research scientist, entrepreneur, marketer, corporate IP manager, and patent practitioner
• We "right-size" your patent protection to fit your special needs- from a simple "patent pending" for guerilla marketers to building a patent wall around your crown jewel, we deliver.
• Customized cost reduction opportunities for small businesses and individuals
• Unique combination of multidisciplinary capabilities including IP development, searching, protection, strategy, marketing, and technology support uniquely enable us to efficiently understand and align the work product to your needs as a whole
• Exceptional technical breadth and depth in practical and theoretical knowledge
• We continuously analyze the latest court decisions affecting future litigation and patent drafting/prosecution practice
• Our strategy is customized for each client's risk/reward tolerance in the context of current legal trends and what they can afford
• Technology specific learning time that is out of the ordinary, if any, is never billed for
• We provide all the foregoing, and more, affordably

We afford to provide quality service at very competitive rates by minimizing overhead. Unlike most patent firms, you pay mostly for our work and not unnecessary overhead. Our diverse service offering uniquely enables us to efficiently understand and align our work product to your needs as a whole, which services include:

Invention development, IP/patent search, DIY "Patent Pending", patent application filing & prosecution, IP strategy, invention marketing, and technology support.

What kind of patent firm is best for me?

In the fast paced, opportunistic environment we live in today a patent is, more than ever, the most effective protection against theft of your invention. There are multiple levels of uncertainty throughout the patent acquisition and enforcement process. The value of a patent in many ways depends on how well it holds up in litigation (for infringement/validity) and against the analysis of fellow lawyers in the case of sale or licensing revenue. It is for this reason you do not want to choose a patent firm based solely on the "lowest bidder," yet because of the significant costs involved in patent acquisition (esp. in building a portfolio) one can not generally afford the more expensive firms that often invest more attention to elegant décor and perks than increasing a patent's true value. The higher overhead forces artificially high billing rates, which, to stay profitable, forces, even some of the best, patent attorneys to churn out product so fast that many critical oversights are inevitably made. These errors do not usually interfere with getting a patent awarded, but may invalidate or severely reduce the patent's scope in litigation, or permit potential licensees excess maneuvering room to engineer around the patent and avoid paying licensing fees. Given that the strength of a patent can depend on a single errant word, a profit-driven "cookie cutter" patent drafting and prosecution practice can be disastrous.

It is not well known, but many, if not most, patent attorneys (non-partners) only keep about 30% of the hourly rate they are billing you, the rest goes to paying the firms overhead and profits. Generally, overhead expenses and firm profits add little, or no, value to a patent. On the contrary, as discussed above, overhead tends to reduce the value of the final product because the patent attorney has many disincentives to giving you a better product. To be profitable, the typical patent attorney will avoid doing anything that requires more time if the client will not readily notice the lack of action. Moreover, the firm's economic incentive is to avoid reviewing their attorney's work quality unless the client is complaining about it. Thus, the combination of both the attorney and firm's economic incentives results in the attorney doing the minimal work required to keep their (often unsophisticated) client happy. Unfortunately, the client's patent rights can be compromised, or even lost, because of this intense pressure to "cut corners." To compound the problem, some, if not most, high overhead IP firms afford to offer lower cost patents to price sensitive clients by having less experienced attorneys actually do the work for the more experienced attorney you thought was doing it for you. For these, and many other reasons, the best value is usually found with firms that have a lower operating overhead and are priced somewhere in between the higher and lower price ranges. However, be aware that high overhead (typically large) patent firms tend not to prefer small startup companies or individual inventors because of the extra time required to "hold hands" with pressure to charge a lower fees. They usually prefer large, high-volume clients that can afford their higher rates and tend to not closely track work quality because no single case is typically important. In contrast, closely held companies and individuals tend to value each invention highly, and tend to require high quality service but at an affordable cost.

How is Bay Area IP's low overhead to your advantage?

Bay Area IP believes that high quality product and service does not have come at a high price if operating overhead is kept under control and inefficiencies in the patent preparation/prosecution process are reduced if not eliminated. We can afford to work harder, and we do.

By extensive use of automation, avoiding expensive office space filled with excess staff, and other efficiency boosting means, we are able to better put your dollars to work directly towards adding value to the final product and our personalized service. In general, work quality depends almost solely on the practitioner working for you, and not the conference rooms, docketing/accounting/IT/International departments, secretaries, or firm perks and vacation houses. With much less of your money spent on paying for our overhead, we can afford to do what we enjoy most- creating win-win situations by spending the necessary time to achieve high quality product and service to continually earn your return business.

Our high efficiency affords us the luxury of appreciating how a close working relationship with you can be efficiently leveraged to drive our work towards your end game.

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