Temporary patent application is a way to determine and protect the "invention date" (or "priority application date") for one year. The purpose of creating temporary patent applications is to provide inventors with a cheap way to start protecting their inventions. Temporary patent application gives you 12 months to prepare a complete patent application, during which you can mark your invention as a "patent application". Temporary patent application allows you to determine the early patent application date of a patent without formal patent requirements, oaths, statements or information disclosure (prior art) statements. However, the provisional patent application must include a written description and drawings (if necessary) sufficient to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention. The invention required to be protected in the provisional patent application must also be sufficiently similar to the invention in the application examined by any corresponding non-patent agent to ensure that the two applications involve the same invention. If any of these requirements are not met, the priority application date of the provisional patent application will be lost.