<i>&gt; ... filing a provisional patent starts a 1-year clock where, if you don&#x27;t find the money and time to file a real patent, your IP irrevocably enters the public domain.</i><p>IANAL, but I believe this is incorrect. My understanding is that if you don&#x27;t follow up with a non-provisional (&quot;real&quot;) patent application, the provisionals don&#x27;t count as prior art, and in fact might as well not exist. This is because provisionals are not published and cannot be discovered until the corresponding non-provisional is published. Would prefer if an actual patent lawyer could confirm, however.