Originally Posted by hershie

In order to quickly protect my idea/invention, and before I was ready to spend the $10K or so to apply for a full patent using patent attornies...I filed a conditional patent on my own for I think around $75 (you can claim small business staus to get that price). The problem is that this is a temporary/conditional application that is not judged on its merits and affords you no rights other than to claim patent pending and you have a year from the date of that filing to file the full one or else you lose the limited protection you get by having your invention registered and on file. I thought this was the more realistic route for me and it may work for you too.