Fearn

Fearn is a patent prosecution firm built for startups that need protection filed on the same timeline as their product releases. The company pairs former Big Law patent attorneys and PhDs with proprietary models purpose-built for patent law, and can take a founder from explaining an invention to a review-ready application in hours. Instead of hourly billing, it charges flat fees of $2,500 for provisionals and $9,000 for non-provisionals including USPTO fees , with provisional filings in as little as three business days and a guarantee that puts its drafting fee at risk if a non-provisional receives no allowed claims . The firm runs on FearnOS, its in-house drafting and portfolio system. Rather than treating a patent as one long linear document, it represents the patent as a graph, mapping 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. A human patent expert reviews every application, edits are protected from being overwritten by the model, and clients get controlled portfolio access, version history, and secure connections to where their technical documentation already lives. Fearn was founded by Caltech alumni Han Kim and Angela Gao, who had seen the problem from opposite sides. Kim prosecuted patents at Morrison & Foerster, while Gao earned a PhD in computer science and AI. They initially built software for law firms but concluded that better tooling alone would not fix the model, since time saved meant revenue lost and sensitive pre-filing IP made AI difficult to deploy safely. The launch matters now because the firm is emerging from stealth with $5.5 million from Kindred Ventures, a16z Speedrun, Designer Fund and Essence VC and paying customers in software, hardware, defense and biotech, signaling a shift in how early-stage companies can buy patent work.