There is no standard form for a provisional application for patent. A good guide to use to help ensure you have an adequate description of your invention is to locate a patent on a similar invention. A good first stop is google patents. It’s easy, it’s free, and you likely already know how to do ordinary searches with google. Much like the regular google search engine, google patents lets you use keyword searches to locate documents in the patent database.
Let’s follow an example. Suppose you have an invention relating to an improved collapsible chair similar to those commonly in use for camping. Try a keyword search in google patents such as “collapsible camping chair” (don’t type the quotes into the google search box) and you’ll get something like this:
If you then click where I’ve indicated with the red highlight, you’ll get patents and published patent applications corresponding to your search with the most recently published documents appearing first. I recommend you look at a few of the most recently issued patents, ignoring the published applications for the moment. Published patent applications will be indicated with an [APPLICATION] at the beginning of the search result.
On the second page of results for this search, after re-ordering by date as indicated above, you’ll find the following:
The result I would focus on in this area is U.S. Patent No. 7648196. It is a recently-issued patent in this field. By being an issued patent, this tells you that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has determined that the written description and drawings are adequate to enable a person of ordinary skill in this field to make a chair as defined by the claims.
By studying one or more issued patents that claim an invention in the same general area as your invention, you can get a feel for the level of detail you will need to include in any provisional application, as well as the level of detail you’ll need to provide to a patent attorney who would help you prosecute a non-provisional patent application.
