Check out these Offerings. Liked this article? Try these:. Back To Top. Plan, fund, and grow your business. Plan, fund, and grow your business Easily write a business plan, secure funding, and gain insights. With well over 9,, US patents and counting, and many millions of published application that have never been patented, it is virtually impossible to do a patent search and not find something relevant.
Patent searching is an art more than anything and if you are not intimately familiar with how the Patent Office classifies inventions and how attorneys characterize things then you would never find what you are looking for even if there is a patent out there that covers exactly what you invented.
Obtaining a patent is an expensive undertaking, and saving a few hundred, or even a few thousand dollars by doing your own patent search is just silly.
Sure, look for yourself first. If you find something then you save the money you would have otherwise paid, but just because you do not find anything does not mean that there is nothing to be found. Why spend many thousands of dollars seeking a patent when a professional patent search would have shown you that a patent would likely not be awarded? Over the years I have preached to inventors over and over again about the importance of doing a patent search. Earlier in my career I would hear from inventors who would say that they searched the Internet thoroughly and could not find the invention so they want to move forward.
Wait a minute! There are any number of reasons why a product might be patented and not available for purchase. For example, independent inventors will many times obtain a patent and then not follow the project through, run out of money, lose interest or simply not succeed despite best efforts. There are many gadgets not on the market because no patent protection could be obtained because it was patented many years earlier.
Over time, however, I have come in contact with a variety of inventors who do their own patent search, then they have a professional patent search done in the responsible manner. Everything looks clear and then out of no where the inventor finds the exact thing is available for sale on the Internet.
How can that happen? A patent search is just that. A search of patents and published patent applications. You hire trained professionals to do a patent search, but the patent search does not typically include a product search online. That is the responsibility of the inventor. So for goodness sakes, if you come up with an invention the very first thing you should do is see whether it exists and can be purchased online or in stores.
Do your own patent search. Knowing the pitfalls that lie ahead of you will help you stay on the straight and narrow path toward success. You can do it! This is because every business or licensing professional with any real industry experience will have at least one story they can tell where at least one individual was paid for an idea. Usually these professionals will have dozens of examples they can rattle off with great authority.
But who is correct? Again, the answer is not so simple. Both the patent attorney and the business professionals are correct. In the patent world, you must have more than a mere idea to obtain a patent.
There needs to be real substance involved. What is required, however, is instruction manual-level of detail. Eventually you were able to put it together, but the instructions certainly were not step-by-step foolproof. The goal of the patent is to teach, not to be a manufacturing document.
Now, if you have an invention, and the patent application you filed defines your invention to the level required by the law, it is entirely possible that business people and licensing professionals will look at your adequate and thorough legal description and consider it little more than an idea. Because to get a patent you do not have to have a working prototype and you do not need to provide any manufacturing detail.
All you have to do is describe the invention on paper so that someone can understand the innovative contribution you claim as yours. There will be many steps between obtaining patent protection on an invention and actually rolling out a safe, affordable product that consumers will want to purchase.
So, for the business person and licensing professional, it is easy to look at even the best patent or patent application and characterize it as an idea, or at best a foundational representation of what the product or gadget will ultimately be once it hits the market. So, can you sell an idea? The answer is yes and no. If all you have is a mere idea that has no structure to it, there is realistically very little chance anyone is going to pay you anything.
For example, thinking of the idea of creating an H. The time machine is an extreme example because no one has any idea how to make one and the current state of scientific understanding suggests a time machine is an impossibility. If your idea is to create a hammer with interchangeable heads, and that is as far as you go, you are leaving out the critically valuable information that people are willing to pay for, which is how to bring this device into being.
You need to take that idea and begin to layer on specifics and nuances. What you are in search of is an invention. Remember, every invention starts with an idea, but an invention will be a nuanced and specific manifestation in a concrete and tangible form. Once you have enough specifics, you will cross over what I refer to as the idea-invention boundary.
Once you have enough tangible specifics to have an invention, the next step is to file some kind of a patent application, typically a provisional patent application , in order to establish ownership rights in your invention. In other words, don't expect a million-dollar deal--it's doubtful you'll retire after licensing your first product. Second, go for the gusto. Most ideal for you, the inventor, is to get as much up-front cash, as high a royalty, and as high an annual minimum payment as possible.
Of course, the manufacturer will be gunning for less risk--which means a lower up-front payout, lower minimum payment requirements, and as low a royalty percentage as possible. But what exactly do these terms mean, and how can you get the best deal for your invention idea? It's important to note that these four components are inter-related: meaning the more you get in one area, the more you might have to concede in another. As with any negotiation, both sides will likely make concessions. Decide which of these components will best meet your short- and long-term needs, and negotiate from there.
There are numerous books that provide techniques in negotiation. The most salient tip I can offer is to use a "non adversarial" approach in which your goal is to create terms that are a win-win for both parties.
Good luck! She is also the and CEO of www. Connect on Twitter: mominventors and on Facebook: facebook. Jerry Reid. Entrepreneur Staff. Anna Johansson. Max Pecherskyi. Alp Mimaroglu. Julia Weikel.
0コメント