If your provisional patent application has expired after 1 year and you have not yet filed a full non-provisional patent application, you may be able to file the full non-provisional patent application late, or file a new provisional patent application.

1) File the non-provisional patent application late:- If it has been less than 2 months since your provisional patent application expired, it may be possible to ask the US Patent Office to allow you to file the non-provisional patent application late and still inherit the date saved by your provisional patent application.

2) File a new provisional patent application:- Since the old provisional patent application expired, it’s lost and gone. But you can file a new provisional patent application and get a new date. There are risks with this though. You are now later in line with the patent office. 

Also keep in mind that if it’s been more than 1 year since you showed your invention to the public, a new provisional patent application may be useless for you. Patent law says you need to have a patent application date that is no more than 1 year from when you showed your invention to the public. So if you put your invention on YouTube more than a year ago, for example, filing a new provisional patent application will be useless as you are no longer eligible for a patent. Discuss with us if you are in such a unique scenario.