Protecting Your Original Design Ideas

I like very much the subject. The cheapest way to prove the time of your idea(s) is to write a letter, with all the details of your invention(s). Than address it to yourself, take it to the post office and mail it to yourself. If the postman knows this procedure, he will take care of the date stamps and their position on the anvelope flap.

The provosional patent pending is, I think, the best way to protect your invention, for 12 month. It gives you the time to come with the prototype or to convince the fortune money to help.

For the invention, itself, it has to be better than the sliced bread, 'cose I have a feeling that we have a surplus of inventions.

.....Idea....yes it is the soul of the invention. As an engineer, more anchored in reality, I tried to persuade some from the elite of thinkers to come with ideas, and I would provide the material realisation. Probably I don't present enough guaranties.....nobody came forward.

On the other hand, we are a formidable engineering intelectual power. In other coordinates, without the constraints of patenting, money, pride our collective mind could perform miracles. Helas, we are just humans.

Why not apply for a patent and use the intellectual property as part of your divorce settlement? It will save you money in the long term. The weasels you refer to, are on retainer, and if a large company thinks they can make money by using your idea, they will use it and worry about the consequences later. If you cannot afford to obtain a patent, how are you going to prosecute a patent infringement case?

Before even considering whether you should patent or not, seriously consider doing some of your own legwork. The USPTO has a good database where you can check prior art and see even if your own work or something very similar has already been disclosed. Remember, the patent office is going to require that your work be novel and non-obvious. Here is what the USPTO has to say,

"Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention."

Most independent innovators do not bear fruit from the patent process. Spend the time to read up on others' experiences. It can be a significant money and time sink and you may very well be better off just being first to market. You will probably get a better return on your $10K by playing the lottery. As others have said on this forum, even if you are awarded a patent, the cost of defending it from another company can be considerable, especially if a large company with deep pockets and lots of lawyers decides it wants to sell a product with your IP in it.

Anybody on this forum know of a David vs. Goliath case in patent law that David won?

Yes.

Candidate patents are checked by allowing any entity that may have a similar patent on record to see if it infringes on theirs.

Steve Jobs went straight to IBM and asked them about his PC idea and was laughed out of the meeting which gave Steve Jobs the permission he needed to go on.

One other thing.

Even if an idea has already been patented. If anyone else has copied that idea and got away with it, then the holder of that patent can't enforce it on anyone else.

The holder of a patent has to actively stay on top of enforcing that patent or they loose it.

Samual Morse didn't stay diligent with his patent on the telegraph and all kinds of copy cats popped up everywhere. He couldn't do anything about it when the first one popped up and he failed to enforce his patent.

Bell Telephone stayed on top of the telephone patent and only the rich and businesses had phones until the patent expired and now telephone companies popped up to sell the public.

Standard Oil maintained a monopoly on oil and was pretty successful at it until oil was discovered in the west and they couldn't keep up with all the different little companies and eventually lost their right to enforce the patent before it expired.

So it's pretty much unless someone steps up and says you're infringing the patent office will let it go through.

How much does it cost to apply for a copywrite?

Provisional patents are an excellent way to establish the filing date of your subsequent patent. The USPTO does not examine provisional patents for prior art so there is no guarantee you would later get a patent, but if written properly it will establish an early filing date for your later traditional patent application.

Provisional patents are often used to buy you time to further develop your invention or to obtain a licensing agreement under their protection.

In my world of design a year passes surprisingly quickly so when we get a provisional patent, we must be ready to act!

I forgot to sign in. Those are my comments above in comment #4.

Consider this guy:

http://www.pddnet.com/scripts/ShowPR.asp?RID=21691&CommonCount=0

Took him seven years.

Unless you are very wealthy and willing to defend your work to your last dime, (and once of sanity); don't bother.

Corporations with contacts in the US Patent office will "share" your work, if it is of any real value and you will be left out in the cold, suing for ever. Those patent readers move on; you know. (I'll bet they forget everything and everyone they ever meet, while reading, too).

The cool new trend is to give it all to your local University, for FREE and hope and pray they feel like giving you a .001 royalty. (That's if there's any left from the new stadium for the team). They call it an incubator. It's where great ideas go to die.

Buy a guitar and hop trains instead. The bruises are the same and you'll at least have a few good songs to remember, when you grow old, instead of complete disgust with all the corporate rejections, excuses and "non-compete / non-circumvent" abuses.

Go re-rent Armageddon, with Bruce Willis and watch carefully how they show him his own invention being used against his patent rights, (and he's big oil). Notice how ashamed the federal agents are, while admitting they stole everything worth a darn, Harry ever invented. (Someone close to me, helped make that film).

1996 it was $8,000.00 for THE patent lawyer and another $38,000.00 for the 9 US UL Laboratories' inspection and approval, (not including the hundreds of hours of R&D and prototyping). To date, not one production electrical device was ever manufactured, even though it passed every standard and regulation. It was the ONLY electrical device in it's class to do so, in the world. (I was told; "No one really wants anything that good, son").

You should go ahead and double those numbers, at todays rates.

Your defense fund may need to be in the millions and there's no reason to believe regional tort laws won't allow your work to be stolen, regardless of patents; in the end. Of course, you may appeal, if you have MORE money...

Most people would go public and raise funds for the public offering first, then stick the investors when the tort laws beat the concept down, bit by bit. I hope you have vast powerful contacts in the corporate finance arena, as well as the industrial electric sector. You'll need them. It will help if they owe you their life or something nearly as valuable.

Without a few old patents already granted and working, your not likely to get far; I'm sad to say.

Good Post.

I wonder if that applies to everything in all fields.

One machine we recently put into production is also produced by Sunkist. The machine Sunkist produces uses linear engineering and ours uses rotary. We had to wait until the Sunkist patents expired before we could start selling ours. We had to get patents for it and we didn't encounter any problems except a waiting period.