Terms of Service

1. Who we are, and what this is

PatentFunnel (“the Service”) is operated by [FOUNDER: legal entity name, form, and address]. The Service is a software tool that helps you capture an invention disclosure, search publicly available prior art, generate structured draft documents, and prepare a filing packet for a United States provisional patent application.

PatentFunnel is not a law firm. The Service does not provide legal advice, legal opinions, or legal representation, and your use of it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Documents the Service produces are drafts for your review; whether and what to file is your decision. For legal advice, consult a licensed patent attorney or agent.

2. Your account

You need an account to use the Service. You are responsible for the accuracy of your account information and for keeping your credentials confidential. Self-hosted or evaluation deployments may offer a shared local demo mode; anything entered in demo mode is visible to anyone with access to that deployment and gets no confidentiality commitment.

3. Your content

You own the invention disclosures, files, and drafts you create or upload (“Your Content”). You grant us only the limited license needed to operate the Service: storing Your Content, processing it through the features you invoke, and transmitting the parts you choose to search or generate against to the third-party services described in the Privacy Policy. We do not use Your Content to train models and we do not sell it. [COUNSEL: confirm the no-training representation is one the founder can stand behind for every configured model provider]

Nothing in the Service is a confidentiality agreement. Running a prior-art or literature search transmits search text derived from your disclosure to the search providers you trigger — do so when you are comfortable with that.

4. AI-generated drafts

Parts of the Service generate text and figures with the assistance of language models. Generated output can be incomplete, inaccurate, or unsuitable for filing. You are responsible for reviewing every word of any document before relying on it or filing it. Search results are drawn from public databases and may be incomplete; the absence of a result is not an assurance of novelty or freedom to operate.

5. Filing with the USPTO

The Service prepares documents and provides step-by-step guidance, but you file with the USPTO yourself, under your own USPTO account. Government fees are set by the USPTO, depend on your entity status, and are paid by you to the USPTO directly. You are responsible for the accuracy of your entity-status certification and for meeting all deadlines, including the 12-month provisional deadline.

You are responsible for the accuracy of the applicant and filing details you enter. Pre-filled forms are provided for convenience and are not legal advice or a filing service. The Service does not submit forms, applications, or other information to the USPTO. Your answers about small-entity and micro-entity status are certifications you make to the USPTO. If you are unsure how to answer, check your status with a registered patent attorney or agent.

6. The patent attorney directory

The Service lists patent attorneys and agents registered with the USPTO and lets you send one of them an inquiry. PatentFunnel does not recommend, rate, or endorse any practitioner, is not a party to any arrangement between you and a practitioner, and receives no part of any practitioner’s fees. Practitioners may pay a flat fee for Sponsored placement, which is labelled wherever it appears.

Sending an inquiry does not create an attorney–client relationship; one exists only if a practitioner agrees to represent you. Do not put confidential technical details in an inquiry. Your disclosure packet is made available to a practitioner only after they accept your inquiry, and only if you chose to share it. Before a listing appears, PatentFunnel checks the practitioner’s USPTO registration. Everything else in a listing is provided by the practitioner.

Practitioners who list agree to keep their listing accurate, to use only the titles “Registered Patent Attorney” or “Registered Patent Agent”, and to make no claim of specialization or comparative quality. [COUNSEL: confirm lawyer-directory and referral-service obligations by state before launch, including Florida qualifying-provider registration]

7. Plans, credits, and payment

Paid plans grant a monthly credit allowance spent on compute-backed actions; credits refresh monthly and top-ups are available. Payments are processed by Stripe. Plan changes take effect as described at checkout. Refunds: [FOUNDER: refund policy]. Taxes: [COUNSEL: tax treatment].

If you connect your own model-provider API key (“bring your own key”), your use of that provider is governed by your agreement with them, and their usage charges are yours.

8. Acceptable use

Use the Service only for lawful purposes. Do not attempt to break, overload, or probe the Service’s security; do not access another user’s data; do not use the Service to infringe others’ intellectual-property rights; and do not resell or white-label it without our written agreement.

9. Termination

You can stop using the Service at any time; deleting content and account closure are described in the Privacy Policy. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms. [COUNSEL: notice / cure / survival provisions]

10. Disclaimers and liability

[TO BE COMPLETED BY COUNSEL: warranty disclaimer, limitation of liability, indemnification. Not drafted here on purpose — these are legal positions the founder and counsel must set, not boilerplate to autogenerate.]

11. Governing law and disputes

[TO BE COMPLETED BY COUNSEL: governing law, venue, arbitration election if any.]

12. Changes to these terms

We will post any changes on this page with a new effective date, and for material changes we will notify account holders by email before they take effect.

Questions: [FOUNDER: contact email]