Thorne & Vale is a patent boutique built by examiners-turned-attorneys and engineers who have shipped. We draft applications that survive both the examiner and the courtroom: wide enough to corner a market, tight enough to never read on the prior art. Every claim is written to be litigated, not merely allowed.
Counsel to the people who file before they ship, and the funds that back them
Big firms hand your invention to a junior associate and a template. Filing services hand it to a form. We hand it to a partner who has examined patents at the office and argued them in district court, and who drafts your claim set as the document a competitor's counsel will eventually have to break.
Our attorneys spent years inside the USPTO. We write the application the way an examiner reads it: anticipating the §102 and §103 rejections before they're mailed, and seeding the spec with the fallback positions that win the appeal you hope you never file.
Before we draft a word, we sit with your roadmap. The independent claims cover the product you sell today; the dependents fence in where you're headed and where a competitor would try to design around. The patent protects the business, not just the prototype.
A real searcher, not a keyword bot, runs your invention against patent literature, journals, and product manuals across jurisdictions. You get a clearance memo that tells you what is genuinely novel and where to point the claims, before you spend a dollar filing.
The attorney who takes your disclosure is the one who drafts it, argues the office action, and signs the issue fee. No re-explaining your technology to a fourth associate. No handoffs that lose the thread of why claim 1 is worded exactly the way it is.
How the practice is run
Invention capture, drafting, filing, office-action responses, examiner interviews, appeals, and global family management, handled end to end by the people who started the file. Nothing gets outsourced to a vendor you never meet.
A 60-minute session, structured so your inventors talk and we translate. We come out with the inventive concept, the variations worth claiming, and the on-sale and public-disclosure dates that set your bar clock, captured before a tradeshow or a paper blows your right to file.
Every spec teaches the invention well enough to satisfy §112 written-description and enablement, with enough embodiments that a narrowing amendment still leaves you a patent worth holding. We draft for the rejection, the reissue, and the day you assert it.
A rejection is an opening, not a verdict. We respond with claim amendments and arguments that distinguish the art without surrendering scope, and we log every remark for estoppel, because what you say to the examiner can be read back to you in litigation.
Most allowances are won on the phone, not on paper. We pick up the interview, walk the examiner through the claims, and pin down what is allowable in real time, turning a final rejection into a notice of allowance instead of an appeal.
PCT national-stage entries, EPO and Paris-route filings, and a vetted bench of foreign associates, coordinated so your claims stay consistent across jurisdictions and no 30-month or annuity deadline ever slips through the cracks.
Clients get a live portal showing every matter, every upcoming bar and response date, and the next action owed, dated in America/Toronto with UTC alongside. You always know what is due, who has it, and exactly what it costs.
We staff every matter with an attorney who can read your drawings without a translator. Patent quality starts with understanding the invention, so we hire engineers and scientists, then make them lawyers.
We draft past §101 by anchoring claims in the technical improvement: pipelines, model architectures, and inference systems framed as solutions to computing problems, not abstract ideas.
Chip architectures, power and RF circuits, and device physics, claimed at the structural level that survives a teardown and an inter partes review.
Compositions, assays, and methods of treatment, drafted with the sequence listings, data, and enablement that examiners in the 1600s art units demand.
Mechanisms, actuators, and control systems claimed across embodiments, so a competitor's redesign still lands inside your dependent claims.
Battery chemistries, photovoltaics, and novel materials, with prosecution strategies tuned for long development cycles and capital-intensive moats.
Wearables, sensors, and device-to-cloud systems claimed end to end, with design patents layered in to protect the look as well as the logic.
One issued patent rarely stops a competitor. We manage the whole estate: continuations, freedom-to-operate, and the diligence that turns your patents into a number on a term sheet.
We keep a child application pending so you can shape new claims around a competitor's product years after your priority date, a live option on your own innovation.
Before you launch, we map the patents in your lane and deliver a clear-eyed FTO opinion: what is a real risk, what is a paper tiger, and how to design around it.
We package your IP the way acquirers and investors read it: claim charts, family trees, and chain-of-title clean enough to clear due diligence without a fire drill.
Patents are one layer. We coordinate trademark filings and a trade-secret program so the parts of your edge that should not be published stay protected and provable.
“Our last firm filed something that read on a product already on the market. We found out during diligence, at the worst possible moment. Thorne & Vale rebuilt the portfolio from the disclosures up, and their claim sets cleared the acquirer's patent counsel without a single revision.”
“I've worked with the big IP shops. The difference here is that one partner owns the whole file. The attorney who took our invention disclosure argued the office action a year and a half later and knew exactly why claim 1 was worded the way it was. That continuity is worth the engagement on its own.”
“We had a tradeshow in three weeks and a hard on-sale bar looming. They harvested the invention, ran the prior art, and got a complete application on file with a week to spare. Fixed fee, quoted before they started. No surprises, no scramble.”
Patent work should not arrive as a surprise invoice. We scope the matter, agree a flat fee, and hold to it. Government filing fees are passed through at cost and never marked up.
Stake your priority date, fast.
Disclosure to grant, one partner throughout.
For teams filing at volume across borders.
If you're racing a deadline or still iterating, a provisional stakes your priority date for twelve months while you keep building, at a fraction of the cost. If the invention is settled and you want examination underway, we go straight to a non-provisional. In your invention review we tell you which fits your timeline and budget, and why.
We quote a fixed fee for each engagement after scoping the matter, and we hold to it. Full Prosecution includes two office-action responses; if a third is needed, you hear the cost before we lift a finger. Government filing fees are passed through at cost and never marked up, so the invoice never surprises you.
In most jurisdictions, publicly disclosing, selling, or offering your invention starts a clock. In the US you have a one-year grace period; in much of the world, a public disclosure can bar a patent immediately. We ask about every demo, paper, pitch, and sale so we file before a bar date closes your right. It is the single most common way founders lose a patent before they ever apply.
Yes, when it's drafted correctly. Software patents live or die on §101 eligibility, so we anchor the claims in the concrete technical improvement: how your architecture, pipeline, or inference method makes a computer work better, rather than the abstract result. It takes a drafter who understands both the law and the system. That is the work.
Most clients file a PCT application within twelve months of priority, which preserves the right to enter dozens of countries for up to thirty months while you learn which markets matter. We then coordinate national-stage entries through a vetted bench of foreign associates, keeping claims consistent and every annuity and deadline on one docket you can see.
Routinely. We file a change of correspondence, audit the existing claims and prosecution history for weak spots, and pick up the live matters without dropping a deadline. If a continuation can strengthen the estate, we'll say so, and we'll be candid if an existing filing has problems you should know about.
Book a confidential invention review. In 60 minutes you'll know whether you have something patentable, where the prior art stands, and exactly what protection will cost: fixed fee, quoted before we begin.