Fearn co-founders Han Kim and Angela Gao. Credit: Fearn A conventional patent application can take 30 to 40 hours of attorney time and cost $18,000 to $40,000 in legal fees. Startups wait months to protect technology that can change by the day. Fearn, the modern patent prosecution firm for startups, was built around a different model.
The company has launched an AI-native patent firm. It pairs former Big Law patent experts with an in-house AI and engineering team. Fearn drafts and prosecutes patents across software, hardware, robotics, semiconductors, defense, biotech and pharma. It offers fixed fees and provisional filings in as little as three business days.
A guarantee puts its drafting fee at risk if a non-provisional application receives no allowed claims. The company has raised $5.5 million from Kindred Ventures, a16z Speedrun, Designer Fund and Essence VC. Fearn enters a $14 billion global patent market, with early-stage companies filing 150,000 new patent applications every year. The journey Caltech alumni Han Kim and Angela Gao founded Fearn after they saw the same problem from opposite sides.
Kim had prosecuted patents at Morrison & Foerster, while Gao earned a PhD in computer science and AI. They initially built software for law firms. They quickly realized better tooling alone would not fix the model. Time saved meant revenue lost, and sensitive pre-filing IP made AI difficult to deploy safely.
So they built the firm around the technology instead. Today, Fearn has hundreds of users, from venture-backed startups to public companies. “We started Fearn because the technology and the economics of patent law are now inseparable,” said Han Kim, Co-Founder and CEO of Fearn. “If AI makes the work faster, the client should feel that in the turnaround time and the bill. That only works if you build the firm around the technology from day one. Our goal is to give startups the quality of a top patent practice with a speed, price and level of visibility that the traditional model was never designed to offer.” How Fearn works At the center of the firm is FearnOS, its proprietary drafting and client management system.
Instead of treating a patent as one long linear document, it represents the patent as a graph. It maps claims to the supporting text, figures and technical material behind them. It preserves attorney edits and a full record of how each section was produced. That structure lets Fearn combine specialized AI with deterministic checks without taking the patent professional out of the loop.
A former Big Law patent expert still reviews every application. Fearn says work that typically takes 30 to 40 attorney hours can require as little as 30 minutes on FearnOS. Provisionals cost $2,500, non-provisionals $9,000 including USPTO fees, and the firm reports gross margins above 80%. Clients also manage their portfolio through the platform.
That gives them controlled access to individual patents, a complete version history and secure connections to the places where technical documentation already lives. Customer outcomes Customers already use Fearn across technically demanding industries. In those fields, filing speed can decide whether valuable IP reaches protection before a product demo, publication or competitive breakthrough. London-based game studio Iconic went from invention disclosures to filed applications in days while protecting technology for AI characters that improvise in real time.
American defense technology company Photon Spear used Fearn to file a hardware space technology patent in several days. It kept its material entirely on privately hosted infrastructure. Serova Bio uses the platform for patent work around AI-designed personalized cancer vaccines. There, claims, supporting disclosure and a growing portfolio need to remain coordinated as the underlying science evolves.
Andrew Bowell, CEO at Iconic, said: “Speed is the whole game at seed stage. A patent process that takes a quarter doesn’t protect you, the field has moved by the time you file. Fearn works at the speed we actually operate at.” Daniel Mukasa, CEO at AbInitio Bio, added: “For a company my size, the hard part is getting a strong first draft together quickly. Fearn got me there in a weekend.
That kind of speed, early, is hard to overstate when you’re moving at startup pace.” The broader market The broader legal market is moving in the same direction. Major firms are making unusually large investments in proprietary AI infrastructure precisely because sensitive legal work requires more control over models and client data. Fearn’s thesis is that startups should be able to access that level of technical infrastructure. They should not have to inherit the economics and operating model of Big Law. “AI is beginning to change the underlying economics of professional services, and patent law is an especially compelling place for that shift,” said Steve Jang, founder and managing partners at Kindred Ventures. “Fearn has built the technology, legal expertise and business model together.
That allows the firm to improve speed and quality while passing the benefits of that efficiency directly to the customer.” What’s next Fearn’s ambition goes beyond drafting patents faster. It wants to give startups the kind of portfolio strategy once reserved for companies with large in-house IP teams and seven-figure outside-counsel budgets. The company is extending FearnOS across patent families, international filings, office actions and long-term portfolio strategy, so founders can see what protects each product, where coverage is weak and what should be filed next. The end goal is simple.
Give a three-person startup the patent infrastructure of a much larger company, so the strength of its IP depends more on what it invented than what it can afford to spend protecting it. About Fearn Fearn is the modern patent firm built for startups. Fearn drafts and prosecutes patents across hardware, biotech, and software, with deep benches in robotics, chip design, and defense tech. Former Big Law patent experts and PhDs draft every application on proprietary models built for patent law.
A provisional takes about three business days at a flat fee. If the examiner allows no claims on a non-provisional Fearn carries through examination, Fearn refunds the $9,000 drafting cost. Founded by Han Kim (ex-Morrison & Foerster, Caltech) and Angela Gao (Caltech PhD in AI). Backed by Kindred Ventures, a16z Speedrun, Designer Fund, and Essence VC.
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