June 2021

To Provisional Patent Application you need a written description of your invention and a check payable to the Honorable Commissioner of Patents. When you mail this package to the Patent Office, you will be “patent pending” for one year from that date. If you wish, you can enclose a self-addressed post card, which the Patent Office will stamp and return, showing your serial number and filing date. Also, in about two months, they will send you an Official Filing Receipt.

However, you do not need to wait until you receive either of these. You are “Patent Pending” for one year from the date the Patent Office receives your application. When you mail your application to the Patent Office, I suggest that you mark your calendar for eight months down the road. During those eight months, you can market your device anywhere in the world and can make it “Patent Pending”. Do not tell them what type of application you have or the serial number or filing date of your application. If this is confusing, there are companies providing help for new inventors.

If they press you for that information, tell them that your patent attorney has advised you not to give out that information, and if they continue to press you, tell them to contact your patent lawyer.

Since there is no examination of Provisional patent applications, you can safely file one yourself and save yourself some money. All you need is a Provisional Application Cover Sheet. You will need to begin with a Provisional Patent Application (printable) Cover Sheet.

When the eight month date comes up, check on how you are doing with your invention and if you want to extend your protection beyond one year, it is necessary to consider filing Utility application, which can actually lead to a patent. I suggest the eight month date to ensure that you will have time for your patent attorney to draft an application and have you review it before you Provisional application expires.

Actually, if you wish, you can have your attorney or a patenting agency, like InventHelp, prepare the Utility Application at any time while your Provisional is in effect. Then, when your attorney tells you that the Utility application is ready for you to sign and send the Patent Office, you can hold it until, for example, the 364th day of your Provisional application and then mail the Utility application to the Patent Office by overnight mail. This will give you the maximum benefit of your Provisional application and will ensure continuity with your Utility application. As stated above, you can save money by filing the Provisional application yourself.

For the past few years, websites, real estate websites included, have been highly effective because of their national and even international appeal. In many respects, the very strength of a website was its reach; the ability to reach a wide audience. There is a paradigm shift that is taking place. Instead of trying to reach a massive audience, websites and web applications have begun to focus on their own backyards, going hyperlocal.

Mainstream media has a tendency to focus on sensational, shocking or national stories. Filling time with such reports often leaves community level coverage lacking and often overlooked. Originally born out of this lack of community news, hyperlocal reporting began to spring up around the blogosphere. Individuals took it upon themselves to collect news etc from their own neighborhoods.

Once this trend established itself, other web elements began to align themselves with the hyperlocal focus. There are plenty of opportunities that revolve around tapping into a hyperlocal market – not least of which, is real estate.

By drawing the community and focusing on its particular attributes, a hyperlocal real estate site can generate a certain resonance. But of course design of the real estate site is also important. Fortunately there are real estate website providers such as Easy Agent Pro which could be used to create beautiful real estate sites as you can see from this review – https://www.themadeinamericamovement.com/easy-agent-pro/.

Right off the bat, my initial questions about adopting a hyperlocal approach concerned the effectiveness of focusing on such a small area. This was a vestigial knee-jerk reaction to my scaling down from the vast nature of the world wide web. There is no cause for alarm. Going hyperlocal does not mean going low traffic. Going hyperlocal means quality content specific to very niche areas.

Going hyperlocal makes a lot of sense especially for real estate professionals. By going hyperlocal and connecting with other hyperlocal elements within an area, a real estate site becomes a portal into that community – establishing the mood, feel and ‘vibe’ of the area. Coupled with other hyperlocal resources, not only does a real estate site have the potential to become a touchstone for real estate but for neighborhoods as well.

The lesson here is that while the idea of having a real estate website is based on generating leads and the best way to do that is to put a site in front of as many eyeballs as possible. However, not all eyeballs are created equal. Hyperlocal viewers are either thinking of moving to the area or currently live there. Thus, they have a very special interest in the goings on, the news and general content of the area. These eyeballs are worth much more then say someone merely looking at real estate from foreign city.

While I try and steer clear of buzz word hype, hyperlocal is a critical component of web2.0 and offers some powerful potential for real estate websites.