About

Most students build a résumé. Ours build intellectual property.

Patent Prep is a selective institute for young inventors that guides high school students through researching, drafting, and filing their own US patent application. Every student finishes as a named inventor on a USPTO filing, with an official application number issued in their name, before they apply to college.

Historic illustration of the U.S. Patent Office in Washington

The U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., circa 1846 — where the nation's earliest inventors filed the records that became American innovation.

A primary-document curriculum

We teach from issued patents, not summaries of them. Students read the same documents practitioners read.

A real act, not a simulation

Every student creates their own USPTO account and files their application in their own name. The filing is verifiable, and permanent.

A credential that compounds

The student's patent publication is a lifetime record. It becomes an imprint in the history of innovation.

The team

Meet the Directors

Kathryn Vatt

Founding Partner · IP Director

Kathryn Vatt is a former United States Patent Examiner with more than twenty-five years of experience helping inventors protect their ideas, including time inside the USPTO examining applications and training the junior examiners who came after her. She studied Biology at the University of Pennsylvania and Biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University. Today she serves on the Advisory Board of Arizona State University's HEALab and mentors founders through Plug and Play's global acceleration programs. She is the author of the MyKidVentors series, children's books born from the real "imagine if..." moments of her own seven children, and the forthcoming Startup IP Strategy For Dummies (Wiley, 2027).

David Yi

Founding Partner · Academic Director

David Yi holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School and over twenty years of operating experience building and investing in education companies across five countries. He began his career as a Peace Corps Education Volunteer in China—an experience that planted a conviction he has never let go: that the right teacher at the right moment can change the trajectory of a life. He went on to serve as Head of Asia for ACT and K12, and as CEO of Riiid Labs, where he led the company's first global expansion and helped raise over $200 million from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund II. He is co-founder of GiftedTalented.com.