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Provisionals--More About
In practice, provisional applications are often used as an alternative to filing a complete, fully drafted patent application. This is usually either to decrease cost or to meet a deadline. Typically, the inventor will submit his or her own drawings and notes. While these may adequately describe one embodiment of the invention, they will, as a rule, not include all the information that a competent patent drafter would understand to be necessary to support meaningful claims.
If the application is not complete, meaning that additional material will need to be added later, the inventor may not assume that it is safe to disclose the invention to the public, or market it, before the complete application is filed.
In addition, if the provisional application is used for its purpose and a patent issue, the provisional application becomes part of the record of that patent. If it is not drafted well, this may be troublesome in litigation and in valuation of the patent.