How to Draft a Patent Application with Patent Bots AI Tools: A Quick-Start Guide

The Three Ways to Work with Patent Bots AI

First, it’s helpful to understand the AI tools Patent Bots provides. There are three distinct ways to generate patent application text, and the right one depends on what you're producing.

Rules-based generation handles sections that are a direct reformatting of information you've already entered, like the claim summary. Because no generative AI is involved, the output is deterministic and will always match your claims exactly.

Saved prompts are prewritten instructions for sections that follow a consistent structure, like the background, brief description of the figures, and abstract. You can use Patent Bots' built-in saved prompts, or build your own, and share them across your firm, so every application follows the same pattern.

Gen AI Chat is the conversational tool for everything else: claims language, figures, and the detailed description. It keeps your full draft and invention disclosure in context, so you can give short, iterative instructions instead of re-explaining the invention each time.

These tools are part of Prep & Pros Pro and are accessed through the Patent Bots Word Add-In.

Getting Started: Attach Your Invention Disclosure

From the Patent Bots Word Add-In, open the drafting panel and select Add Document. Attach your invention disclosure and mark it as an Invention Disclosure. Patent Bots will extract the text and make it available to the AI model as context throughout the drafting process. If you have other supporting material, like prior art or a related application, you can include those documents the same way.

Steps

Step 1: Draft Your First Claim

Working from the Gen AI Chat tab, click Start in the chat window. The Patent Bots tool will review what's in your draft so far and suggest a next step. If you are just getting started with your application, that's typically drafting an independent claim. Ask Gen AI Chat to draft claim 1. Alongside your prompt, Patent Bots includes your patent text, claims, and supplemental documents as context for the model to ensure you get the most accurate output. Once the claim language is returned, you should review it closely for scope, accuracy, and whether it captures the point of novelty.

Step 2: Refine the Claim

To refine the claim, you can give Gen AI Chat targeted follow-up instructions; for example, asking it to remove language better suited to a dependent claim or to broaden the claim's scope. Because Patent Bots keeps the full conversation and your current draft in context, you can give short instructions ("remove X," "broaden this to cover Y") as you iterate.

Step 3: Build the Full Claim Set

Once you're happy with Claim 1, ask Gen AI Chat to expand it into a complete claim set. For example, you might ask the tool to draft three independent and twenty claims total. Ask explicitly that the dependent claims all be different from one another; since the AI is generating them automatically, there's no reason to repeat similar dependent claim language the way you might when copying and pasting by hand, so each one can add distinct, non-redundant coverage. Once you're satisfied, insert the claims directly into your Word document with a single click.

Step 4: Plan and Detail Your Figures

With the claims complete, you can start on figures. Ask Gen AI Chat to suggest a figure sequence to illustrate the invention. The tool will review your claims and invention disclosure together and propose a set of figures, noting which figures support which claims. If something doesn't fit, ask for a revised sequence before moving on.

Once the sequence looks right, go figure by figure and ask Gen AI Chat to provide details for each one. The tool will return the elements, reference numbers, and relationships to include. From here, you can use these details to create your actual figures, whether by hand or with an AI design tool.

Step 5: Attach Your Finalized Figures

Once your figures are complete, attach them through Add Document the same way you attached your invention disclosure. Gen AI Chat will generate a text description of each figure, giving you a written account of every element and relationship. It’s worth a quick check of these against the actual figure, especially for anything visually ambiguous, since this description becomes context for every step that follows.

Step 6: Draft the Detailed Description

With claims and figures in place, move to the detailed description. This is a great use of Patent Bots' Saved Prompts tab. Using a saved prompt here keeps that structure consistent from application to application. To help you get started, you can even use the Patent Bots-provided prompt for the introduction, which instructs the model to return a short section that introduces the invention's subject matter and its main novel ideas.

From here, work through your figures in order, asking Gen AI Chat to draft a complete description of each one. Be explicit that the description should support the dependent claims and any alternative implementations from your invention disclosure. For figures that are largely repetitive of ones you've already described, ask for a brief description instead, noting that it mostly references previously described elements.

Step 7: Fill In Any Remaining Gaps

Review the draft for anything that needs more depth. For example, if you need more technical background, you can ask Gen AI Chat where the best place to add this would be, and it will review the full application and recommend a location. This is useful for building in extra specificity you may need later if claim scope ever has to shift.

Step 8: Generate the Claim Summary

Switch to Patent Bots' Rules-Based Generation tab to produce the claim summary. Since this section is just a reformatting of your existing claim language, rules-based generation gives you a guaranteed, predictable output that matches your claims with no generative AI involved.

Step 9: Finish the Remaining Sections

Use the Saved Prompts to generate the title, background section, brief description of the figures, and, once everything else is finalized, the abstract. Saved prompts work well in this instance since these sections are standardized. Plus, if your firm or a specific client has stylistic preferences, you can even build those into your own saved prompts so every application follows the same pattern automatically, whether it's a personal prompt or one shared across your whole firm.

Step 10: Check Completeness and Proofread

To help you finalize the draft, ask Gen AI Chat a simple, open-ended question: "How are we doing?" The tool will review the entire application against your invention disclosure and figures, flag anything that looks incomplete, and give you an overall status check.

Once you are satisfied with the complete draft, switch to the Proofreading tab. Patent Bots' proofreading tools rely primarily on deterministic, rules-based checks for common issues like numbering and dependency errors, antecedent basis errors, and word and phrase support issues. As an added check, you can also use the Gen AI Review tool to check for typos, grammatical errors, and inconsistent or conflicting technology terms that human review often misses.

Your Review Still Matters Most

With Patent Bots AI drafting tools, you can produce a complete first draft in a fraction of the time manual drafting takes. But the tools don’t replace the patent attorney's judgment. Review every section carefully throughout the drafting process to confirm the claims are properly scoped, the specification supports them, and the application reflects the invention the way you and your client intend it to be protected.

And because Patent Bots operates with zero data retention, none of your invention disclosure, drawings, or drafts are ever stored on our servers or used to train the underlying model. Your confidential information stays exactly where you'd expect it to.