With all of this obvious intelligence zipping around the group I was wondering if anyone has recently gone thru the patent process? If so, how do you get started? How do you decide on an attorney or agent? Any advice on what to look out for? Things most forget? Sites? Info? What about the cost? Investors? I've serached the net and get about a billion hits so it would be a crap shoot at the very least. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I begin the long process of securing my idea. TIA
You might want to read a book titled "Patent It Yourself", I forget the author. It contains a fair amount of realistic advice on the selling of an idea/patent. Getting a patent is relatively easy. Making money from it is not.
Start with a patent search. No point in going forward if someone else has already patented your idea. Go to the US patent office site and use every key word you can to see if someone has done prior art. Take a full day of searching, you never know what obscure patent may cover your idea, and even then you may not catch the one you (don't) need. It's also good training for learning patent speak, which you must know.
Get a good patent lawyer if you have a killer idea that needs protection. Yes, it's expensive, but unless you are willing to spend half your life in patent litigation, don't try to do it by yourself. The only real point of a patent is to be able to defend it in court. If you're not willing to go to court, don't patent. Patents are a lawyer game, and very lucrative for them.
License your patent, unless you want to start a company and develop, market and sell product. Good luck if that's your line, but if you are an inventor or designer, and not a business man, don't get into something you have no experience in unless you are 500% committed to making it succeed. Stay with what you are. Find a good company that is in the field of your patent and strike a deal. Get as much up front fee as you can negotiate and then ensure that you get a royalty for each copy sold. Trade between fee and royalty to get the best deal. Be prepared to walk away from the negotiation at any time, there is always someone else. Sure is.
Be prepared to spend at least $10-20k upfront, before you get any return, and keep the patent up to date, don't miss the renewal fees - the latest game play from the US patent office.
UK patents are free to file but once the first year of the Patent Application stage is over and you get into having to firm up on your claims for the final draft and filing world wide, costs mount up very rapidly and should really be paid for by who ever takes on the patent.
Think of the first stage (Patent Applied for) as buying very cheaply a 'Take off' slot at an airport for your new aeroplane. As time passes (usually 1 year) you have your take off time (Intellectual Property) protected and you are trying as hard as possible to sell on your take off slot to a manufacturer who will be able to takeover your takeoff slot in the queue.
However when you get to the front of the queue and you stand at the at the end of the runway, you need to make a desision - Either give up your take off slot for ever, or burn alot of fuel and take off. You have to have the money to reach take off speed or else it is waste of fuel (money) even starting. That is why it is best to have sold on (ie license ) your takeoff slot by the time you get to the front of the queue.
As for patent agents - I've used three so far and all have bben a different experience ! The worst was the most expensive and the cheapest was the best !! So I would work on local recommendation.
Well, I've gone through lots of patents and a few lawyers, and now have over 2 dozen patents.
I'll put down concepts in the order I think is the most important first:
Study several books on patenting. Nolo Press has a basic one to start, and get info off of the
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website for inventors.
Search the USPTO.gov & get good at doing advanced queries in their system, on Google, and elsewhwere.
Patents are only as good as the TRUE uniqueness: Pencils can be made so many ways already, that a new innovative one is almost surely a loser.
Unique & usable products may be desirable, but typically they must be price competitive or even lower price than competitive articles doing the job for which you are designing a product. Know your production costs at varying levels of production along with tooling costs (packaging costs more than some simple products cost).
Mass market items almost always need a "Big-Box" player to move the products, because the sales & promotion costs are so terribly high. Infomercials may sound great, but fewer than 1% of new products see an infomercial, and few infomercial's ever "ignite" a market. Going it alone can be a slow painful death. Going with a "Marketing Whiz" scammer can kill you even quicker (we have all seen it). Get a business lawyer to help with all potential agreements or you play on a perilous edge.
Something can be unique, but not patentable. Patent attorney's will not normally tell you your invention won't get an issued patent, or they won't get their fees. They will just issue the standard, "It seems like you have a good chance of getting it to issue."
Study every single patent similar to what you are trying to do, and study their CLAIMS and diagram the independent claims (the most important ones). Many products get a patent on unimportant or trivial features which can be accomplished many ways.
Try your hand at writing down all the independent claims for your ideas and bring the list of all prior art you can find in the patent office and elsewhere when you come to the patent attorney. The less you waste your attorney's time, the lower your bill. If he suggests an additional "Search", be prepared to take his suggestions and do it yourself, as his fee for searches will decimate your bank account.
Try to ask and ask and ask until you find a lone patent attorney who doesn't have to support Rosewood walls and teak boardroom conference tables. I've seen quotes for a simple patent go from 00 for ones where I detail most of the structure with a single attorney, to a ,000 quote for the same thing from a big-name Patent Attorney firm.
In the U.S. you generally have a year after you invent something to file the application, and if you want to retain the ability to file foreign applications, you must keep your invention private (no public release, per USPTO definition) before filing the U.S. application. You have about 18 months after US filing to file foreign application fees, and if you do, you will need a hefty checkbook to support foreign filings.
You can file a provisional patent application with limited materials for a small fee
Bo's advice is excellent, as is Sporkman's. In addition to those, I would recommend a book called "From Patent to Profit" by Bob DeMatteis. You can probably get a copy at your local library. Also, check out the website
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from the same publisher. Save a lot of money by pursuing the provisional patent while you are trying to decide if your idea/invention will make money.
Brian and Bo have it. I've got some patents, too, and have seen many that aren't worth the paper on which they're printed. If you botch your claims, you're hosed. Keep things as broad as you can patent them. A good patent attorney should never describe anything with detail that isn't necessary--this limits your patent--some patents are worthless if only for this reason.
A few things I forgot in note below have been added in subsequent to point 12 above:
Patents today are on slow-track at the USPTO because of overload and you can figure maybe 18months before they reply to your initial application. That means you will have to pay foreign filing fees if you decide to file foreign, before you find out whether the USPTO has any serious objections to your patent, which would make the foreign filings useless. This also means that a company wanting to use the device is going to have to make an agreement with you on a Patent Pending situation, and it will be up to you to study and negotiate like mad with the USPTO and haggle over essentials to get the patent issued, or likely your royalty or end fee on-issuance will go to near zero.
End User Demand: There must be a compelling reason for your end user to use your widget rather than the iPod from Apple. Ease of use is a BIG deal (think iPod versus others). 20% cheaper on a one time purchase may NOT be a big enough inducement to get a sale let alone a major market share. Companies would like to see a low cost high quality super-widget which has a damn good chance of taking 15% market share in 12-24 months. Figuring out how to do a good size market survey yourself might make the difference between getting a manufacturer to take on your widget or not.
Once all the preliminary design, searches, & costing are done: The product had better have a high gross profit for the product with a
3,4,5 cost/pricing structure (at a minimum) and still compete or beat the competition's prices.
$10 in materials & direct labor $30 sell to wholesaler $40 to distributor $50 retail to end user
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