It's not that simple, but it's not as bad as the article you posted makes it sound. He's a patent lawyer trying to convince you that you need to file as soon as

It's not that simple, but it's not as bad as the article you posted makes it sound. He's a patent lawyer trying to convince you that you need to file as soon as possible. It's in his interest to convince you that the grace period is worthless. If you make a public disclosure and someone else tries to file for a patent and the claims are covered by your disclosure (provided the patent examiner is aware of the disclosure), your disclosure will count as prior art and the patent will be denied. If however you try to file a patent within a year of making a disclosure, your disclosure will not count as prior art. Here's more reading if you're interested: https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2153.html https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2153.html The problem is that there haven't been many court decisions to clarify the new law and most of these scare articles by patent attorneys are just conjecture. Also note that most of the articles you'll find in a Google search warning about the grace period are more than 5 years old.