Introducing Idea Clerk Assistant: Fast, Free Guidance for Startup Patent Strategy

We just launched a new Idea Clerk Assistant to help startup teams make clearer, faster decisions about patents—without wading through jargon or committing to an expensive legal process upfront.

It’s free to use, but you’ll need to create a free Idea Clerk account to access the Assistant.

What it’s for

Most founders have the same early questions:

• “What in our product is actually patentable?”

• “Do we have one invention here—or several?”

• “What should we file first?”

• “Should we start with a provisional?”

The Idea Clerk Assistant is designed to give brief, practical answers grounded in the frameworks and guidance in the Idea Clerk blog, then help you translate that into a concrete next step.

What it helps you do

1) Get quick answers to basic startup IP questions
It provides brief, plain-English guidance on the questions that matter most early: what’s worth protecting, patents vs. trade secrets, when a provisional makes sense, and how to think about IP when you’re iterating quickly and fundraising.

2) Spot patentable inventions in your product (not just “features”)
It walks you through how to think about your product in terms of value moments and the technical lifts behind them, then surfaces likely candidate inventions.

3) Decide whether you should file multiple applications
Startups often have more than one patentable invention. The Idea Clerk Assistant will suggest multiple applications when appropriate—usually by separating distinct inventions into distinct filings, consistent with our strategy guidance.

4) Prioritize what to file first
It helps you choose what’s worth filing now versus later based on stability, business importance, and how likely the invention is to remain relevant as the product evolves.

5) Choose a filing approach (provisional vs. non-provisional)
It explains how provisionals are commonly used by early-stage startups, and how to think about timing and sequencing based on the blog’s filing strategy posts.

6) Point you to the right way to prepare an invention description
The Idea Clerk Assistant won’t draft your invention description in chat. Instead, it directs you to our guide including how to do that safely and effectively using ChatGPT.

7) Help you take the next step in Idea Clerk
When you’re ready, it nudges you to start one or more Idea Clerk projects so you can move from “questions” to an actual draft.

If you’re curious, try it now

If you can explain what you’re building at a high level—and where you think your advantage is—the Idea Clerk Assistant can quickly help you get to: what to file, how many filings, and what to do first.

Again: the Assistant is available through your free Idea Clerk account.