All of my granted patents are owned by my previous employers, who also paid all expenses involved in submitting the patent applications, and collect any royalti

All of my granted patents are owned by my previous employers, who also paid all expenses involved in submitting the patent applications, and collect any royalties. Some of my patents are essential for video codec standards, including H.264/AVC and HEVC. It was a change of mindset to apply for my first patent for Vimmerse. If you are in the US, the USPTO has a good overview here: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/patent-process-overview https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/patent-process-overview Application fees are lower for small entities or micro entities. https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/fees-and-payment/uspto-fee-schedule https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/fees-and-paymen... But the biggest cost is paying for a patent attorney to prepare the application. If you want to try to do it on your own, I found this book very helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Analysis-Claiming-Patent-Lawyers/dp/1614385610/ref=asc_df_1614385610 https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Analysis-Claiming-Patent-La... Good luck!