How to Write a Strong Invention Disclosure: A Step-by-Step Playbook

A practical playbook to write complete, attorney-friendly invention disclosures with enablement, diagrams, and acceptance criteria.
How to Write a Strong Invention Disclosure: A Step-by-Step Playbook
Most invention disclosures fail for the same reasons: vague problem statements, missing technical details, and lack of variants. Here’s a concise playbook to get it right.
The 7 Steps
- Define the problem and prior art with evidence and links
- Describe the core idea and measurable advantages
- Provide full technical details: components, parameters, dependencies
- Include variants and edge cases, with trade-offs
- Add labeled diagrams and reference them in text
- Provide data, benchmarks, and acceptance criteria
- Review with a checklist and bundle your artifacts
Pro Tips
- Use MWEs to guarantee enablement
- Keep diagrams close to text; reference figure numbers
- Prefer concrete numbers to adjectives
Related guides: Enablement, Common Mistakes.