DO YOU WANT TO DO AN EXPERIMENT ON SOMEONE? OR ARE YOU A DOCTOR? WHY DO YOU NEED A PATENT?
You need to convert your idea into an invention. Patents do not protect ideas. You can probably get some inexpensive initial advice from your local patent attorney for under $500. If your invention is complicated it could cost over $10,000 to draft and file a proper patent application for your first country, which serves as the basis for others.
To reserve your rights for up to a year, while you round up investors for your invention, you can file a provisional application.
If you're a billion-dollar pharma developer, you could run up the legal fees, but otherwise it would rare for a patent to cost much more than $25,000 to $30,000. It's true that a retainer for your first infringement case might cost upward of $100,000, but by that time you're spending someone else's money.
Here is the official U.S. patent office site that those assistance services would ultimately go through http://patft.uspto.gov/ you can do some preliminary patent searches to see if the thing has already been patented. Writing a patent application that meets the requirements might be beyond the capability of most people, most probably employ a patent attorney for some hundreds of dollars. You probably have to provide a proof of concept working prototype for some types of patents.
Professional inventors with their own garage machine shop where they create series of prototypes will tell you that ideas alone are a dime a dozen, those online services that charge hundreds of dollars have disclaimers warning you that most inventions fail. Some low cost protections I have heard of, supposedly if you start selling an invented product (and document those sales) you have 1 year to retroactively patent it, after it proves to be worthwhile. Sending a registered letter containing plans might give some protection if left unopened, though this is probably better for copyright works like movie scripts.
Jake hasn't a clue there -- top drawer patent attorneys will cost about $125,000 up front. After they file the application, you have one year to come up with another $125,000 to secure world rights. [if you don't, then rights in all other countries lapse completely]. During this year you also must begin actual sales and delivery of goods using your idea -- if you don't, you lose all rights.
you NEED top drawer patent attorneys. This because if you use poor quality ones and your product takes off, some sharp company will decide your patent claims are so poorly drawn that they can win the court case. so, they then copy your idea directly and, in essence, challenge you to sue them. [if you don't, you lose all rights.] if you lose the case, you lose all rights.
btw, you have to pay for the lawsuit claiming that someone else infringed on your patent yourself. Expect this to cost another $100,000 and up.
I would like to get a patent for my idea. I need to know the process
