Reduce Your Invention to Practice

Once you establish your date of original conception, you have to reduce your invention to practice. In other words prove it works the way you say it does. This is important since reduction to practice is what the US Patent Office relies upon if there is a dispute. The inventor who can show the earlier date, will have precidence. This is usually done in one of the following ways:

1. Adequate descriptive drawings. This could be the drawings you compiled in your invention disclosure, but additional drawings are almost always needed once some testing and discovery has been done.
2. The filing of a patent application. This also establishes the legal date. This can be either a provisioinal patent application or the permanent patent applicatioin.
3. Build a working prototype. A functioning prototype obvious proves the invention's functionality.

Use a legal, sequentially numbered notebook such as the Scientific Journal to maintain your tests, drawings and other invention related activities.