How the Step Forward™ Service Works

My website intake form screens requests to check whether the Step Forward™ Draft Review service is a good fit for your situation, based on the jurisdiction, the technology area, and your goal. This service is designed to help an inventor, patent practitioner, or other authorized person improve a draft U.S. provisional or non-provisional patent application that is already written, in a technology area I’m experienced in.

The website gathers contact info, and gathers info I use to check for any conflict of interest.

I make sure there are no conflicts of interest, based on the info you provided. I also check my workload to make sure I can deliver your report within 5 business days of when work on it begins.

I send you an email with an upload link for you to securely upload your draft patent application. You can upload a provisional or non-provisional draft in .pdf, .docx, .txt, or other text formats. The draft should be as complete as possible — the more complete the draft, the more useful the report.

Important: You’ll need to let me know when your draft has been uploaded, by replying to this email. If I don’t receive your reply within 10 business days, I will follow up once before closing the matter.

The email also informs you that an engagement agreement will be coming to you in a separate email from the DocuSign site.

The email also includes a payment link, for you to pay for the Step Forward™ Draft Review service. The payment goes into the Ogilvie Law Firm Trust Account.

After the engagement letter is signed, the payment is made, and I have your reply confirming that your draft has been uploaded, I will begin work on your project. That’s when the 5 business day delivery clock starts.

I use proprietary AI technology to generate a rough draft of your Step Forward™ Fixable Vulnerabilities Report, based on your draft application. The rough draft is my internal privileged work product, not the deliverable.

I revise the rough draft, using my 30+ years of experience as a patent attorney, my knowledge of how AI works — what it is good at and what it is not good at — and my knowledge of the relevant technology area(s).

When I am satisfied with the revised Step Forward™ Fixable Vulnerabilities Report, I email it to you. That final report is your deliverable. It identifies the top 12 fixable vulnerabilities in your draft application, ordered from easiest to most difficult to fix. At that point, the fee is earned and the payment will be transferred from the Trust Account to the Operating Account. If you cancel before I send you the report, the full amount will be refunded, minus payment processor transaction fees. If a conflict or technology gap arises during the work, I will withdraw and send you a refund, minus payment processor transaction fees.

If you have questions about the report, you can send up to 12 questions to me via the website contact form using the subject line “My Step Forward Q&A.” They must be sent within 5 business days of the report’s delivery. They must be questions about the vulnerability findings as delivered — not questions about patentability, prior art, or claim drafting, or questions seeking filing advice or other legal advice. The Step Forward™ Draft Review service is a limited scope service.