Fearn Combines Legal Expertise With Technology

A conventional patent application can take 30 to 40 hours of attorney time, cost $18,000 to $40,000 in legal fees, and leave startups waiting 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 pairing former Big Law patent experts with an in-house AI and engineering team. Fearn drafts and prosecutes patents across software, hardware, robotics, semiconductors, advanced materials, defense, biotech, and pharma, with fixed fees, provisional filings in as little as three business days, and a guarantee that puts its drafting fee at risk if a non-provisional application receives no allowed claims.

Fearn 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.

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Fearn says work that typically takes 30 to 40 attorney hours can require as little as 30 minutes of attorney time on FearnOS. Provisionals cost $2,500, non-and provisionals $9,000 including USPTO fees. Image courtesy of Fearn.

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, while preserving 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. Every application is still reviewed by a patent expert. Fearn says work that typically takes 30 to 40 attorney hours can require as little as 30 minutes of attorney time on FearnOS. Provisionals cost $2,500, and non-provisionals cost $9,000, including USPTO fees.

Clients also manage their portfolio through the platform, with controlled access to individual patents, a complete version history, and secure connections to the places where technical documentation already lives.

Fearn is already being used across technically demanding industries where filing speed can determine whether valuable intellectual property is protected before a product demo, publication, or competitive breakthrough. Andrew Bowell, CEO at London-based game studio 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."

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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 without inheriting 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 partner 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."

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.

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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.