Think Tank Quandry

Not seeking patent protection for inventions that you have worked on for years whether sporadically or concertedly in my opinion is just down right foolish. My reasoning is simple. You can't expect to be philanthropic by any sense of the word if you allow the potential source primary capitalization to be usurped by others who would and rightly seen the protection of legal ownership of material and/or intellectual process.

Without knowing your circumstances, it's difficult to tell if you are asking for philosophical reasons or if you are looking for practical advice. The extent of my personal experience with the US patent process had to do with an idea I had while working for a company and finding, after a brief consultation with a patent attorney, that the company I was working for might have a claim on the idea. That, coupled with the investment required to go through the patent process (with dubious chances of fiscal success) kept me from pursuing it further. There, I've exhausted the practical side. That didn't take long. As for the philosophical side,....I'd say that if your goals are "philanthropic" then find someone in the industry your invention is relevent to and pitch it to them. If it passes muster there they should be able to find the financial backing to develop it. The risk of someone else getting credit for the idea (and making the money from it) is substantially greater, but since your goals are primarily selfless anyway, it shouldn't matter. On the other hand............? For what it's worth, I have generally found that it's a good policy to try to do as much as you can to help those around you without threatening your own survival too much. Some situations may require much greater sacrifice, but that depends on the circumstances. The old "what goes around comes around" approach. Leave it all in the hands of the Lord. He's pretty consistent about making sure everything ultimately comes out fairly as long as we are doing our best to fully use the gifts He's given us for good.

Most successful inventors' rule of thumb: If you aren't ready to protect your patent through the court system, don't bother patenting. If you aren't going to patent, don't bother inventing. Having an idea is about 2% of the process. The other 98% is researching prior art, getting a patent, getting funding, marketing and suing patent jumpers. There are organizations which exist to shepherd you thru the process; a very high percentage of them are frauds. Bottom line: don't move forward unless you're ready to plunge in up to your neck.

Hi Chris At least you live in USA, where patents are respected, where piracy is punished, and where patent offices use to process a patent application within a year, and a country where there exist a mature venture capital system capable to support thousands of star-ups at once. You must ask for patent protection, because any investor will firs ask you for if your ideas are protected, no investor will be willing to invest capital in non protected ideas. In my country, Chile, piracy is almighty, and the patent office is so small and insignificant, that patent applications get lost for ever under tons of foreign applications, and foreign applications are processed instantly provided the inventions are already registered overseas. I am the author but not owner of US Patent 6,014,029 for an instantaneous soil moisture sensor that operates at UHF frequencies, where the dielectric constant is almost a pure real quantity with negligible complex part. But the owner is a Chilean "capitalist" private company. In my opinion here we have not arrived yet to capitalism, because companies are capitalist only from the outsider viewpoint, but inside they are still communist, because for an engineer working inside there are no incentives, it's the same like working for the soviet state. I have many versions and new designs for this sensor, based on an "orthogonal" principle, completely independent of all claims of my own US patent, but there are no ways to find support, the banking system here is absolutely coward, they prefer to finance luxuries and consumers, but not innovation. Now I have my own company, it is small, but it is mine. I prefer that instead of being an employee, in my opinion an employee is just a new kind of slave, at least here in Chile. If you are young, do not apply to any company, try to start your own one, in the USA you have infinitely more possibilities, being a US citizen is the most valuable privilege I can imagine, and in the next life, If there is one next life, I will ask God to be born in the USA. Sincerely Jaime Soto Figueroa http://www.matharts.cl

If the moisture meter will measure moisture or RH inside walls, may corn stoves purchase a few from you? Express freedom to sell at profit in any country. Large companies are run by dictators and operate in a solistic manner in all countries including the US. Company Inventors yield inventions to the company. A patent is actually public disclosure of private information. Once disclosed, even an idiot can go figure how to sell from a country that does not honor patents. If you desire to extend life and maintain ownership of an idea, consider a copyright as the best protection to avoid public disclosure of private details.

Please yahoo or google search for key words like TennesseeCornStoves if you have an RH meter ready for market or seek to market amaizing blazing corn stoves and corn stove cookers.

To try to sell one of these sensors would be a useless effort, it would be copied.

Jaime Soto
http://www.matharts.cl/

Jamie, The master designer of a product will know best how to improve the product. Continuous improvement will maintain the master designer a position ahead of imposters that copy. For example, the gillette razor first had a single blade, then twin blades, then multiple blades, and now a motorized multiple blade. The design was continuously copied and duplicated but gillette, over a 20 year period, gillette was always one blade ahead of the imposters. The alternative option is to keep the design a secret with grave results. Sorry but this is how the real world operates. Another option is to wait and release the product during the millenium. At which time the bad guys immediately get zapped while the good guys reign for 1000 years

ANY IDIOT can reverse engineer a product therefore you can only copyright a name

Thanks for the input .I realise the importance of patent protection but as has been noted there are many pitfalls first initial capital for US patents then for other countries and then for defense of those claims .I am thinking that there should be established a safe place for idea developement that affords finance , legal advise , tools, materials ,facilities, profesional assistance,marketing .Maybe the inventor could pledge a percentage of any profits realised .One look at the internet reveals a nightmare of those pitfalls .I would think someone like Bill Gates would step up and provide my utopian facilities .If I had the money I would consider a non profit inventors haven .Like the art world provides for aspiring artists .I realise there are unfortunately many difficulties with my idea but I wanted to throw it around .One issue I could see as an obstical would be how to decide who was a viable canidate .On the positive side if it worked imagine the possibilities

You can start by asking the USPTO to do a patent search in the field of your invention. For that, you need not disclose the true nature of your invention, just give a few really fitting key words. It costs a few dollars, but you will see whether your invention is unique, or whether you have to adjust the wording to make it sound like unique.

I have done patent searches and as is the case with many inventions a new twist is all it takes to be different .Once you reveal your idea it gives others the oppertunity to copy it .So if your not ready to go full steam ahead it is pointless to seek patent protection .In short I full understand the mechanics of the process but I'm suggesting an alternative .I appreciate your input but you may be missing my point .If an inventor had the resources of say a co-op or pooled resources then he might have a better chance at success , with support or criticism .I had a friend who spent the better part of 10 years trying to push a better insulation cutter but was doomed to failure for several reasons .One his invention was not that good or commercially in demand .Two cheap mold production was too expensive for initial start up .third he tried to go it alone and was so finacially strapped he couldn't think straight .But assuming you had a great idea your still up against the same problems .Shouldn't there be an alternative to selling out to a big company or throwing the dice .

I'd suggest filing provisional patents on your own, after having read the text of 30-40 patents of items very similar to your own. (Do your own thorough search first at the USPTO site.) I'd also suggest, prior to filing, that you read a couple of the books on doing your own patents. If you file a provisional patent you can inadvertently reduce the breadth of your eventual full patent, if you do not do the provisional patent with care. (You can't later add claims that are not supported in the provisional.) Once you have good provisionals, then I think you can start talking with potential investors. I'd talk to no one until the providsionals are filed.

As stated above. If you can't afford to defend it, any patent is worthless. Applications are king [ killer apps ]. Do it better & cheaper, offer insight & support a copycat can't. Your brain is the special sauce, that makes the burger so very tasty. Most everyone here has given away ideas worth big $'s. An organization to protect us is long overdue & not forthcoming. Keep cranking out the good ideas & hope luck smiles. Realize when you have a real opportunity [ timing is everything ]. Have witnesses you can trust & document everything [ include verifiable dates ]. Make friends w/a lawyer you can trust { some tasks are harder than others }.

Good advice, you say "Most everyone here has given away ideas worth big $'s." As late back as the mid 1980's my future father in law, CEO of one of the UK's largest brewaries, and also an agricultural consultant to the BBC (The Archers Radio Soap)...Asked me about the problem of non attached ring-pulls from pop and beer cans. If Cattle got them stuck in their hoof, it invariably made them lame, with septisemia. "IDEA" ...ensure they stay with the can! An old friend and neighbour was CEO of 'ALCAN', another owner of 'TETRAPACK'(this guy drives round in a shed of an old Lada)....You can bet the patent was worth a few nickels. If I had gone out on a limb by my own, I would have been bankrupted!.... Wait for the next can....This patent expires soon. The Tooling Costs alone are out of the stratosphere, so team up with the folk that can afford it. That's my advice.

Postscript: And those very very nice folk at the BBC ensured that I retained the 'Copyright' on the 'new can' yet to be launched. A short while after the launch of the non-detatchable ring-pull, every sports event etc. at prime time featured a BBC1 Television Broadcast 'Station Ident Logo Animation'. (except that the Can-Top pour hole was in the shape of the BBC '1'...

Next time I have $5000 to burn I'll have to follow through and start patenting some of my ideas .Until then I'll continue to wince everytime I see a new product that comes out that's simular .Or the same need will arise and I'll be reminded of my great solution .But I would be a lot more ambitious if I could pursue those ideas and know exactly what I would do next to get it in the market .Knowing I could bang on some doors and pursue alot of imagined options but I doubt it .And I'm sure I'm not alone

I don't know about where you are, but at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada (not far from Toronto) there is an Invention viability assessment service offered for a flat rate. They will look at market potential, price point, production implications etc. and give you an unbiased opinion on your invention, unlike the private ripoffs that will tell you that any lame idea you come up with is great, in order to separate you from your money. I find myself in a similar boat, with ideas and no outlet at present. But I'm building my business as a self-employed mechanical designer, and work on fine tuning my pet invention projects until such time as I am able to back them up financially and resource wise. I have also read a few books on invention, and have gathered that provisional patents are a good idea (MUCH cheaper) but that they have to be written properly and you have to be prepared to follow through. An interesting term I have come across is "welfare inventor" where someone with nothing but an idea expects to be rewarded handsomely for it, while others do the work, pay the bills and take the risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, because, quite frankly, an idea and a dollar gets you a cheap cup of coffee. I personally feel there is a lot that a person can do to further the value of their ideas with "sweat equity", starting first and foremost with self education. Treat your invention idea as a business proposal. A proper business plan contains all the elements of research required to know whether what you have is viable or out to lunch. If you don't take your research seriously, chances are no one else will either.

Oh, and something that seems to have been overlooked as a third option (if you're not prepared to defend your patent) is to license or sell your patent, for royalties, to someone who is prepared to defend it, either in the courts, and/or by continuous product improvement, keeping one step ahead of the imitators, which seems to be the pro-active approach that's becoming the norm among successful companies. Now if it wasn't for those damn patent trolls...

That's some good information .I wonder where the american counterpart is ?You seem to have been through the same trials as I have .One way to look at it is, a piece of advise a patent attorny gave me .Would you rather make a $100,000 or 10% of a million . Unfortunatly I have desided to keep my ideas close to my chest knowing they are patentable rather than exposing them to the inevitable copy artists ,Knowing I don't want to allowcate the resources or try to buddy up to a potential licensee .It presents a quandry that I will benifit exactly zero as a result but I wont have spent alot or gotten ripped off is somehow a balance? In a way I'm searching for an answer to that question .I'm going to do something but I wish there where more secure avenues .I accept there will allways be risk but the patent process seems unfairly cumbersome .

Some useful information can be found at www.asktheinventors.com