Filing Provisional Patents from a Laptop in the Desert
The patent system is designed for big companies with patent attorneys on retainer. I'm a guy with a laptop in Tucson.
But provisional patent applications don't care who files them. Sixty-five dollars each if you qualify as a micro entity. You write the specification, you describe the invention, you upload a PDF. The priority date is the date you file — that's what matters.
I filed sixteen provisionals across five waves between January and March 2026. Each one describes a different piece of the system I've been building — how signals get routed, how trust decays over time, how devices find each other on a mesh, how identity works without a central authority.
They're not patents yet. Provisionals establish priority. You have twelve months to convert them to non-provisionals or file internationally. I need a patent attorney for that part, and I need one soon.
But the dates are locked. That's the point. While I was driving across the desert and setting up in Tucson and writing code until 3am, the clock was also ticking on getting these ideas on record. Sixty-five dollars at a time.