Tinker is patent and trade mark advice for people who invent things in a shed. Bring the drawing, the prototype or the napkin. We tell you in the first hour, for nothing, whether it is worth protecting — and what it will cost, in writing, before you spend a penny.

Book a free first hour

A long, sunlit workshop with arched windows, workbenches covered in tools and timber stacked along the walls.

Who comes to us

Retired engineers with a better hinge
Welders, joiners and fitters
Students with a 3D printer
Small makers with a name worth keeping

An older man with white hair, seen from behind, working at a crowded workbench under a strip light.

Fixed fees

First hourfree
Search of what already exists£480
Drafting and filing a patent£3,900
Registering a trade mark£650

A young man at a desk in a workshop, a 3D printer and small prototypes beside his monitor.

What we read

Sketches on the back of an envelope are fine.

Most of the inventions we file started as a drawing like this. We turn it into the words and numbered figures the patent office expects, and you check every line before anything is sent.

Black ink sketches of boxes, frames and arrows filling a sheet of paper.

Why we work like this

Most people who invent something useful never protect it, because the first quote they got was a range with no ceiling.

We spent twelve years at a large firm writing patents for companies with their own legal departments. The people who rang in from garages were passed around and then quietly priced out. Tinker is for them: two attorneys, one workshop table for meetings, and fees that are the same for everyone.

If we think your idea is not worth protecting — because it exists, or because it would cost more than it can earn — we say so in the free hour, and we tell you why.

A hand with a pen pointing at rows of small interface sketches on paper.

A man in a striped knitted vest working on a metal part with his hands, lit warmly from the side.

A workshop wall of hand tools beside old dials and a hanging lamp.

Wooden shelves full of old hand tools in warm light.

A row of worn wooden-handled chisels on a rack against old boards.

Before you tell anyone

A welder in a mask working on a large steel cone in a dark workshop.

Write down the date

Sign and date your drawings and notes. If two people invent the same thing, dates are what we argue with.

Old machines, motors and cardboard boxes on wooden workbenches in a brick workshop.

Keep the prototype at home

Do not lend it, post it or take it to a fair yet. A public showing can make a patent impossible.

A workbench covered in carving tools, wooden handles and half-finished pieces.

Bring everything to the hour

Sketches, photos, the thing itself if it fits in a bag. The free hour is an hour; we will not stretch it into a bill.

The one thing not to do: post it online "to see what people think". Once it is public, in most countries it can no longer be patented — not by you, and not by anyone.

Book the free hour