Your Guide to Patenting Your High School Science Fair Project in the USA

After spending a long time on a science fair project, a lot of students want to put it out into the world to help the people that it is meant for. But a crucial first step is protecting your intellectual property, and that’s where the patent process starts. 

Please note– all advice in this post is not from a legal expert and only applies to U.S.-based students. I have been through the patent process personally as the applicant, but please seek legal expertise before pursuing a patent.

What Are Patents?

Before we explore how you can get a patent, let’s consider who can get a research patent. If your research project has invented something, then you can apply for a patent so that it is legally protected and can’t be copied. This invention could be a new and useful process, machine, composition of matter, software, or an improvement of these.

Find a Patent Lawyer

The first step in the patent process is finding a lawyer. Unfortunately, in the U.S., it is extremely challenging to file a patent on your own, and you are most likely not going to advance far in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO. There are many very precise specifications that your application has to meet, and a patent attorney is the best person to make sure you hit those targets. 

While filing a patent and hiring an attorney can be a big expense, many larger law firms may have pro bono assistance available. That’s when a firm agrees to shoulder a majority of, or all of, the costs associated with filing your patent.

I urge all high school students applying for a patent to reach out to a number of firms and request pro bono assistance, and be sure to mention that you are a young scientist looking to protect your work. These firms want to help when they can!

Key Patent Deadlines

After you’ve obtained an attorney, there are some key deadlines to be aware of. In the U.S., your “deadline” for filing a patent is 1 year after the first public disclosure of your project, which for science fair students is usually their first science fair competition.

For example, if you presented your work for the first time in public on March 1st, 2026, you have until March 1st, 2027, to file a patent protecting your work. Otherwise, you lose the right to file a patent. 

This is a scary deadline, especially if you’re having trouble finding a lawyer. But there is a built-in failsafe– something called a “provisional patent.” A provisional patent is a streamlined application that gives you a one-year bonus period to file your official patent, which is termed the “non-provisional patent.” 

To help this make sense, let’s continue the March 1st analogy. You first publicly disclosed your project on March 1st, 2026, and you have until March 1st, 2027, to file with the USPTO. But you only found your lawyer in November of 2026, and you may not have time to prepare a complete, non-provisional patent application before your deadline. 

Then, you can file a provisional patent, a quicker application that would grant you one year of protection before you need to file the complete non-provisional patent. Your attorney will know better if a provisional patent makes sense for your particular case before filing a non-provisional. 

File Your Patent

Filing the patent itself is less work for you and more work for your attorney. They will ask for details on your research project, method, and design of the thing you are patenting, and will also likely have you look into the research literature to see if anything similar has been done before. Then, they will take that information and use it to write your patent, which typically looks like a 30-40 page document that will be passed on to the USPTO. 

So, you found an attorney, wrote up your application with them, and officially filed a non-provisional patent with the USPTO. Now, the waiting game begins.

The USPTO gets so many applications that they are quite backlogged– it could be months between communications with them, and you likely won’t receive any office action until a year and a half or two years after your initial filing. But that’s ok, during that time, your intellectual property is protected under the phrase “patent-pending,” and nobody can steal your information. 

What are Office Actions?

I mentioned office actions– what are those? Those are official communications from the USPTO asking you to make a change to your application. They usually revolve around the three criteria for granting a patent, which are novelty, non-obviousness, and utility. Your project must be novel (completely new and not existing elsewhere); non-obvious (no one else could come up with this idea easily); and useful (it must provide a real-world benefit). 

An office action may ask you to specify more about the use of your invention, or ask you to dispute another idea that looks similar and explain why your invention is unique. If you are receiving office actions, it’s a good sign that you are well on your way through the patent process, and your attorney will file official responses with the USPTO to ensure your patent continues on its merry way. 

After all office actions are resolved and you have met those three criteria, your patent will be granted! A United States patent offers 20 years of protection, after which your invention will enter the public domain. 

International Patents

A key deadline to note is for an international patent, which can be an extremely difficult process to navigate. Your attorney will assist you in deciding if an international patent is right for your invention, which it may be because a U.S. patent only grants protection from infringement in the United States. But overall, you have until one year after your United States patent application is filed to apply for an international patent – after that, you’ve lost the chance.

Though patenting is a long, tedious, and often confusing process to navigate, having protection of your intellectual property can be a big help as you begin to scale your invention and bring it to the people who need it most.