Good place to register a patent
 

Welp, since everyone else is doing it these days for everything possible, I thought I would try one. What is a good place to file one? Can I do the write up myself or do I need to get a technical lawyer to write everything up?

I am thinking legalzoom.com, any help and referrals would be appreciated

Thanks but I am aware it can be done at that site directly. However, I don't think I am technologically advanced enough to write all those technical terms I see in their patents so I would need a company to review everything to make sure its legit and accurate and technical, etc.

You can easily file a preliminary patent with the USPTO, and claim small business status so it will only cost $80. They do not judge the merits of your submission and you can only use patent pending status and you have 1 year from then to file a full patent. This way you can at least get something officially on record and start out to see if you can make the business/technology workout before committing $10K to file a full patent application.

One tip, is use a proper search service that will look in databases like Lexis-Nexis...to see if there is any previous art...that is out there that will nullify you getting the patent approved, before filing.

Thanks for the help. I doubt this idea has been used before. Would the patent pending prevent others from using legally using the idea or registering another patent for it?

Get a law firm to do it. It takes a long time to work it through the system.

Thanks for the advice but I don't have a very big budget for this idea at the momment. It may not make a lot of money at first but I need to protect myself from larger companies with bigger budgets from seeing my idea, copying it, making it better, and marketing the hell out of it which knocks me down the ladder.

For example. Let's say I was making a site that stores a public database of all the airlines in the world, their flights, delays, etc and lets users search the database by all methods to pull up flight information. Let's say there were no other sites that did this. I create the site and start marketing it, I don't want a big boy to come along and see this idea is profitable and make his own site with a bigger marketing budget.

Thats just a broad example that the airplane in the G3X ad above me made me come up with.

Sorry if this is a bad example.