Once you have determined that you meet the qualifications for assistance, you must first complete the United States Patent and Trademark Office online patent training (best viewed in Internet Explorer). Then, please submit an application for assistance.
To apply as either an individual inventor or as an organization/small business, please fill out the appropriate application form below, attaching the training certificate to the form.
We do not accept invention descriptions, applications, or supporting materials that are substantially generated by AI tools (like ChatGPT or similar) for the following reasons:
- Program integrity: Assessing an application to the [put program name here] for possible [representation/placement with a volunteer attorney] depends on accurate, applicant-conceived information. It is both unfair to other applicants and a waste of staff and volunteer attorney time if the invention or portions of it was not actually conceived of by you.
- Inventorship: Under current law, AI tools cannot be inventors. If anything claimed in a patent application was created by an AI tool, you risk the validity of any issued patent and may not qualify as an inventor yourself.
- Novelty risk: Depending on the platform you use and settings, AI tools may expose input to others, which can constitute public disclosure that jeopardizes patentability.
- Accuracy risk: AI-drafted text can misstate or fabricate technical details, undermining our understanding of what is new and leading to drafting mistakes that may affect patent scope.