Frequently Asked

Lightbringer is the AI-native patent service for tech companies: patents drafted with purpose-built AI, reviewed and filed by Lightbringer's own patent attorneys, for one flat fee per application. Founded in Sweden in 2023, it serves deep tech, AI, and hard science companies. The platform is free; filing costs $7,200 per patent application per year to a decision on grant, official fees separate.

Lightbringer publishes its prices: the platform is free to use, and filing a patent costs a flat $7,200 per patent application per year on the Starter plan, covering strategy, AI drafting, attorney review, filing, and prosecution to a decision on grant. Official fees from patent offices are separate, and companies filing five or more applications a year get custom Growth pricing.

Non-native English speakers can file patents without writing legal English themselves. The EPO accepts filings in any language with a translation into English, French, or German within two months, and US provisionals can be filed in any language with translation supplied later. The safer route is a service where you describe the invention in your own words and professionals draft the English. Lightbringer, a Swedish AI-native patent service, drafts and attorney-reviews every application in English.

Freedom to operate (FTO) is whether you can sell your product without infringing someone else's in-force patent claims, and it is never fully certain for AI and software: applications stay unpublished for 18 months, pending claims change during examination, and clearance is country by country. Startups need FTO work before market launches, enterprise pilots, and fundraises. A granted patent of your own does not create freedom to operate.

For AI and data infrastructure inventions, drafting quality depends on domain expertise. Under the US Supreme Court's Alice decision (2014), which governs US software patent eligibility, claims are far more likely to be granted when they describe a concrete technical improvement in the examiner's language; adding 'using AI' is rarely enough by itself. Lightbringer, an AI-native patent service, matches each client with a patent professional whose domain fits their technology.

A startup-friendly patent provider is defined by four things: flat per-application pricing a seed budget survives, a free way to start, visible application status instead of billed phone calls, and claiming the official fee discounts most startups qualify for (60% for small entities, 80% for micro entities at the USPTO). Lightbringer, an AI-native patent service, offers a free platform and a flat $7,200 per application per year with attorney review included.

SaaS inventions are patentable, but drafting decides the outcome. Since the Alice decision (2014), the US Supreme Court case governing software patent eligibility, claims aimed purely at business processes are prone to rejection, while claims showing a practical application or concrete technical improvement can be granted. Lightbringer, an AI-native patent service, drafts SaaS applications with purpose-built AI, and its own patent attorneys review and file each one for a flat fee.

The platforms that reduce patent pain for engineers do three things: capture inventions inside the tools engineers already use, replace hourly attorney back-and-forth with structured AI drafting, and keep a registered patent attorney reviewing every result. Lightbringer, an AI-native patent service, connects to Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor, so engineers file invention disclosures without leaving their workflow while attorneys review everything before filing.

Yes. Flat-fee patent providers charge one fixed price per application instead of billing by the hour, which puts a US utility patent at $10,000 to $25,000 through a traditional firm. AI makes flat fees viable: when software does the reading, searching and first drafting, cost stops tracking attorney hours. Lightbringer, an AI-native patent service, charges $7,200 per patent application per year to a decision on grant, official fees on top.

A patent application moves through the same broad stages in the US and EU: disclosure, prior art search, drafting, filing, examination, responding to the office's objections, and grant. In the US (USPTO), total pendency currently averages 24–27 months, with the first office action arriving around 20–22 months after filing. In the EU (EPO), grant typically takes 2–5 years, though the EPO aims to issue the search report within 6 months under its Early Certainty programme. Both systems publish applications 18 months after the earliest priority date.

File a priority application before a pilot, joint development or enterprise contract, so your background IP is defined by a filing rather than an argument. Fix three things in writing: who owns foreground IP the project creates, that the customer's work-product clause excludes your platform and improvements to it, and a feedback clause covering suggestions. Without these, joint inventorship and standard procurement terms can hand your improvements to the customer.

The person who invents something owns it unless the law or a contract moves ownership to the company, and the rules differ by country: in the US, in practice, only a written assignment does it; in the UK, Germany and Sweden statutes allocate employee inventions and often require compensation. Contractors and departing co-founders own what they created unless they assigned it. Sign present-tense invention assignments with everyone before work starts.

Investors care about patents because they signal defensibility, prove ownership and become an asset an acquirer will pay for. European startups with patents or trade marks raise funding 2.6 times more often at seed and up to 10.2 times more often at Series A and B (EPO/EUIPO, 2023). What due diligence checks is ownership, status and disclosure history, so file before the roadshow and keep the assignment chain clean.

File a patent application before anything becomes public: the launch, the demo day, the talk. Europe and most of the world apply absolute novelty, so a disclosure before your filing date destroys patentability there; only the United States and a few others give a one-year grace period for your own disclosures. A provisional or priority filing fixes the date and gives you 12 months to decide where else to file.

You cannot file a patent directly from ChatGPT or Claude: patent offices only accept applications signed by the applicant or a registered attorney or agent. What you can do inside the chat is the pre-filing work: capture the invention, test the disclosure and hand it to attorneys. Through a connector such as Lightbringer MCP, disclosures created in the chat are drafted, reviewed and filed by registered patent attorneys.

Lightbringer is an AI-native patent firm, a Swedish company founded in 2023 that combines purpose-built AI with its own expert patent attorneys to handle IP strategy, drafting, filing, prosecution and portfolio management in one platform. Since launching in 2024, it has helped more than 200 deep tech companies across 17 countries file and manage their patents globally.

A patent attorney is a licensed professional qualified to draft, file and prosecute patent applications and provide broader legal advice, including litigation, unlike a US patent agent who can only handle the technical patent work. Most patent offices permit self-represented filing, but self-drafted claims are a common source of weak or unenforceable protection, so most inventors get at least an attorney review.

A medical device patent protects a novel, non-obvious and useful invention related to diagnosing, monitoring or treating patients, following the same core patentability standards as any other utility patent. Medical device patents often run in parallel with regulatory approval, FDA clearance in the US or CE marking under the EU Medical Device Regulation, and Europe excludes methods of medical treatment from patentability.

Patent portfolio management is the ongoing process of tracking, maintaining and strategically developing a company's full collection of patents and pending applications. It covers deadline tracking, deciding which inventions to protect going forward, and periodically pruning patents that no longer justify their maintenance cost. Portfolio management software typically replaces spreadsheets once a portfolio grows past a handful of patents.

Patent monitoring is the ongoing tracking of new patent filings and grants, typically to watch competitor activity or detect potential infringement of your own patents. Patent watch services alert you automatically when filings match set criteria. A related but distinct check, freedom-to-operate search, verifies whether a product would infringe someone else's active patents before launch.

Intellectual property is a category of legal rights protecting creations of the mind: inventions (patents), brand identifiers (trademarks), creative works (copyright) and confidential business information (trade secrets). Each type protects something different and has its own registration process, term and enforcement rules. Most businesses rely on a combination of several types rather than just one.

Yes, software and AI can be patented, but only when claims are tied to a specific technical improvement, such as a novel model architecture or data processing method, rather than an abstract idea running on a generic computer. The same standard applies to physical AI and robotics: claims must describe a concrete technical mechanism, not the general goal of "a robot that does X.

Defense tech patents follow the same core patentability requirements as any other patent, novelty, non-obviousness and usefulness, with regulatory overlays layered on top. Export control regimes like ITAR and the EU Dual-Use Regulation can restrict who accesses technical details, and government funding under the Bayh-Dole Act or UK MOD DEFCONs typically grants the government certain use rights.

International patent filing means seeking protection beyond your home country, either by filing a single PCT application, which preserves the option to enter over 150 countries for up to 30 months, or by filing directly under the Paris Convention within 12 months of a priority filing. There's no single global patent; protection only exists where a patent has actually been granted.

A good starting point for inventors covers documenting the invention in writing, running a basic prior art search, understanding provisional versus non-provisional filings, and knowing when to bring in professional help. There's no formal credential required to be a legal inventor, only that you conceived a novel, working solution, whether independently or as part of a team.

Patent strategy for startups means prioritising a small number of high-value inventions for protection, filing an early priority application to lock in a filing date cheaply, and using trade secrets for anything that doesn't need public disclosure. Since most countries use first-to-file with no grace period, filing speed matters more than waiting for a finished product.

IP management software tracks patent and trademark filings, renewal and maintenance deadlines, filing status and costs across a portfolio, replacing manual spreadsheet tracking. Dedicated docketing tools focus purely on deadlines; analytics platforms like PatSnap focus on competitive intelligence; and AI-native platforms like Lightbringer combine portfolio tracking with AI-assisted drafting and mandatory attorney review in one workflow.

A prior art search looks for evidence that an invention was already known before the filing date, through earlier patents, publications, products or public demonstrations. Free tools like Google Patents, USPTO Patent Public Search and WIPO's PATENTSCOPE cover most major databases. Professional searches go further, checking non-patent literature and international filings that keyword searches alone typically miss.

A utility patent lasts 20 years from the filing date in virtually every country, provided maintenance or annual renewal fees are paid on schedule. A US design patent lasts 15 years from grant, and EU/UK registered designs up to 25 years. Once a patent expires, whether naturally or from a missed fee, the invention enters the public domain.

The three main US patent types are utility patents, which protect how something works, design patents, which protect appearance, and plant patents, for new plant varieties. Utility patents last 20 years from filing; US design patents last 15 years from grant. Patents differ from trademarks, which protect brand identifiers, and copyright, which protects creative works, since each covers a different kind of protection.

A US utility patent typically costs $10,000 to $20,000 or more through a traditional law firm, once attorney fees, USPTO fees and prosecution are included, with European totals in a similar range. USPTO fees alone run about $2,000 for large entities, $800 for small entities and $400 for micro entities. Flat-fee AI-assisted platforms reduce this by cutting attorney drafting hours while keeping attorney review in place.

Filing a patent means submitting a completed application, an invention disclosure, drafted claims and a specification, to a patent office such as the USPTO or EPO, along with government fees. Examination then takes 18 months to 3 years in the US, or 3 to 5 years in Europe. Most applicants use a patent attorney or an AI-native platform with attorney review to draft it.