Before making a substantial investment in a patent application, it often can be helpful and very cost effective to obtain a professional patentability search.  Such a search attempts to identify some prior publications that disclose most or all of the major features of the innovation, thereby helping to avoid wasting money trying to patent an unpatentable innovation.

A basic version of such a search typically can be completed within 1-3 weeks, and usually costs between $800 and $1200, although searches can be halted early if a document is found that strongly undermines the likely patentability of the innovation.

A reasonable argument can be made to justify spending even more on an initial patentability search, as follows:

1. The cost to prepare and file a typical U.S. non-provisional patent application is roughly $5500 to $8000.
2. The cost to prosecute a typical U.S. non-provisional patent application to the point where the USPTO's best available prior art has been revealed, and the applicant decides to abandon the application, is roughly $1500 to $4500.
3. Thus, the cost to prepare, file, and prosecute a typical U.S. non-provisional patent application to the point where the applicant decides to abandon the application is roughly $7000 to $12,500.
4. Roughly 30-35% of all original US non-provisional patent applications are abandoned and do not issue as patents.
5. Assuming that 75% of all abandoned original US non-provisional patent applications are abandoned due to unexpected patentability challenges, one could reasonably justify spending $1575 (75% x 30% x 7000) to $3281 (75% x 35% x $12,500) to determine that any given innovation is unpatentable or not worth patenting before preparing, filing, and prosecuting its corresponding U.S. non-provisional patent application.