~Choosing a Patent Attorney.--~The next hardest thing to do after making a working model of your invention is to get a _patent attorney_ to take out a patent for you.
I don’t want to infer by this that it is hard to find a patent attorney for on the contrary they are as numerous as sharks in the sea and twice as voracious, but a patent attorney who really understands his business and will take an interest in your affairs is as scarce as a _pseudotriakis microdon_,[3] unless you are backed by unlimited funds, and then you _may_ get service.
It is a strange thing but just as soon as you begin to work on an invention you will see in every weekly paper and magazine you pick up the advertisements of patent attorneys and usually they are located in Washington “in a building across the street from the patent office” or in a building up the street from which the patent office can be seen.
Their _ads_ are very alluring as they often offer as an inducement to make a _free search_, as explained in Chapter III; to keep your signed _evidence of conception_ in their fire-proof safes, and to refund your money if they do not get a patent for you. That these knights of the patent bar will do all they say there is not the slightest doubt and that is just where the rub comes in.
Any patent attorney can get a patent allowed on nearly anything if the claims are written _narrow_ enough but when it is granted it won’t be worth the paper it is written on and the patent examiner knows it, the patent attorney who gets it knows it and you will know it too after you have spent your good money for it but then it is too late. A patent attorney of this kind is a good one to keep away from.
The safest way is to go to a patent attorney in your own city or get into communication with one who lives nearest to you and engage him to prepare your patent application and _prosecute_ it in the patent office.
And whatever you do make him agree to a _flat-rate_, that is to name a fixed sum which you are to pay him for his services including the fee for filing the application in the patent office. The _filing fee_ is $15 and the lowest fee I ever heard of any patent attorney taking to prepare a case and seeing it through the patent office was $30, which with the final government fee of $20 makes a total of $65; and from this his fee will go on up to whatever amount he thinks he will be able to get you to pay.