Your upfront cost and time from early idea to attorney-ready, three ways: EntreDash, hiring it out, or doing it yourself with software. Change the numbers to match your invention.
Ranges are estimates from published prices, not quotes, and not legal advice. EntreDash prices are pay-as-you-go with no plan. Filing fees aren’t included. See the sources and assumptions.
Most first ideas don’t survive a prior-art search or a look at the market. Hiring it out, each idea that doesn’t pan out still costs a search, a consult and a CAD revision, because a search is how you find out. On EntreDash, each idea screened is one set of three memos.
A more complex invention costs more to model and to revise when you hire a CAD designer, and takes longer to learn to model yourself. On EntreDash, an invention with more than six main parts adds the large-invention 3D model add-on.
The DIY path is cheaper than hiring it out, but most of its cost is your hours: learning CAD, learning to search patents, and searching each idea carefully. These are our estimates; there is no published study.
Patent filing fees, attorney drafting, prototypes and manufacturing. For filing costs, use the patent cost calculator.
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