Next Steps

Now that you have built and sold them, I'm not sure about protection, but, in the US it is first to invent that has rights to the intellectual property. Not sure of the details.

I am in a similar situation. I spent all of my money applying for a patent. I have been working on design modifications to bring production price down.

One thing that helped me a lot, was to create a company name and form an LLC. This is not hard or expensive. I did it online. The benefit is, that it opens doors to suppliers that don't sell to the general public. The wholesale prices are far less expensive than buying retail. With the economy the way it is, most wholesalers have waived or cut minimum purchases way down.

It may be worth a consult with a patent attorney to see what, if any options you have concerning protection.

Once you sold product then you are out of patent since intellectual properties are not protected below sale.

Patent is for targeted country or have global and most of the case one will loose paint and shirt. I know alternate way how to do this and have done but unfortunately can not say in public forum.

You can still salvage at minimum cost

Already did the Company Naming and LLC thing.

Have contacted an attorney and found that we can not afford the patent process using an attorney. Ours is a side business and we still have families to support with the normal paychecks.

Still, finding a company to sell us one at a time wholesale prices is next to impossible. Too many middle men wanting a slice of the pie and everyone wants our retail price business.

We still have to buy lots of parts as 1-offs & use local machine shops where we can. If you build up a good relationship they will be happy to use your work to fill in between other jobs.

Like some of the other posters said, if it's a small niche business, the big guys won't be interested. I know that in the US it's first to invent that has rights, but I don't know the details beyond that.

You can file a patent yourself, but it's a lot of work and a lengthy process. You may be able to write your own patent app. and get an attorney to review it for you and tell you what needs work before filing. This would save money.

Hi peteolsen

The first thing that has to be in place is a detailed business plan. If you don't have a business plan you will have great difficulty in:

1. Evaluating were you are.

2. Were you want to be.

3. Were your potential customers are.

4. What the opposition is doing

I mean the list can go on for ever and a day. Try and keep procedures, production realistic, like in time spent, materials sourced, and the list goes on.

You can circumvent patents by having trade secrets in place. These could be any thing, from design to implementation of work processes which helps cutting costs.

You don't mention the difference, advantages of the system you offer but if it is as good as you think it is then why drop the price? It will cost what it rakes and only after a growth period (establishing reputation) will you get to buy in bulk or establish a credit line with your suppliers.

With out a business plan to much will be left to guess work. There are many sources to delve into and they all basically suggest the same: Due diligence, till the cows come home.

Good luck and stay friends, Ky.

I agree that a business plan can aid in identifying in put/out put but it's primary purpose is to assist you in getting more investment capitol. It shows to your local lending institution and or potential investors where you are now and where you intend to be in one, two or often three years out (when dealing with investors).

There is a group called SCORE www.score.org/index.html Which is a non profit group of retired entrepreneurs who will assist people with business start ups etc... I found them most helpful.

Hi crimich13

Good advice.

What many people think is that a business plan is the entry to funds. That is true to a certain extent. A business plan is a living thing. It has to change all the time, depending on who you approach or what your business is.

I have several projects and all are covered by a business plan. A versed reader of business plans will recognize short comings in an instant so one should be very diligent in writing, re-writing one. Having a mentor helps enormously but nobody is perfect.

A never ending story, unless one finds the finance required and then the real work starts, which is sticking to it or change it in full flow. Its been very hard for me to do (the artistic tendencies) but I have had some success. Bean counters have no feelings and are trained in a certain way. There is no space for waffle, like the above.

Train to roll with the punches, otherwise one can get hurt, Ky.

Sorry peteolsen

Welcome to CR4 BTW. This (OT=Off Topic) can happen in CR4 and we can still be on the case. Just some interlude stuff. Hope you don't mind too much. Just you wait and see, there are others who will have their input to your (and many others) problem.

My business plan stands for now anyway, Ky.

Pete,

Given the choice between a business plan and a patent, I'd go with the business plan.

Patents are only as good as the lawyer you can afford to hire to go after the "infringers".

You need to make dispassionate decisions about what you want to do. No matter what you do, it will cost you money. It's risk and reward.

Get quotes from potential suppliers and shippers and see what gives you the best bang for the buck. Many projects start with months of "what ifs". Promise the vendors much business later if they will just give you a competitive quote now.

Stay under the radar for as long as you can, so the competition doesn't take the business away from you.

How much custom work is there?

In the US - once an item has been sold it can not be patented.

You don't mention what kind of a system but if exotic enough or needing to be custom designed for each customer it may not make any difference.

If designed for a specific trade or business and you make your name in that business and your costs are reasonable for the product others may well choose to stay out.

Russ

Thanks, good info. Did not know this.

I am technical, not legal. Unfortunately, several have been sold.

We were also told that there was a one year deadline from when the system was made public knowledge. Just never had the funds to play the legal game. We were told the legal fees could be around $10k, not in the budget for two guys in a garage.

Rcapper has it right in post 14.

Like someone else said - if you work it right with your customers/potential customers a patent may not be meaningful.

If the tech content is high and the market reasonably small you may be perfectly OK.

Good luck.

1. My advice is be careful when teaming up with people. Be sure to have an agreement with your partner and others that may become partners. In your agreement establish the terms that any dispute will be settled by a mediator and not in the court.

2. Buy a book from Nolo Press "Patent it Yourself" and first establish if your product is unique or un-obvious, if so do a patent search on the USPTO site to see if your invention is different. If it is different.

3. Follow the instructions in the book and file a utility patent application. It is simple to do, and it will cost around $300.00 and keep following the instructions in the book as your patent progresses through the PTO. This process will take years and in the meantime you have a patent pending. Now you are covered to focus on your product, Make sure all your drawings say copyright. I just saved you $50,000.00.

4. Your big problem you are facing is knowing the size or your market or what the demand will be for your product. If a customer were to call and give you an order for 5,000 systems, you would get price quotes accordingly and your unit cost will decrease, there is no way around this process. If you sell one system a year, your cost has to reflect that fact.

I have been going down this road of bringing my invention to the market for over 12 years and it is not easy. Good Luck, do not give up.

Unless they have changed the system you have one year from first public knowledge or sale to file your patent. You should have a witnessed notebook with numbered and sewn in pages with ongoing notes pertaining to its development preferably generated through the course of its development.

As noted, if you can not afford to defend your patent then it is of no value. If you do not defend it then it becomes public domain. You must also, in addition to all the initial patent fees, pay patent maintenance fees to the patent office. You must weigh the potential for income and its realistic marketability against these considerations. There are an untold number of patents that have never produced any profit for their owners. Be careful.

There are people who can help you streamline your design. This is one of the things I occasionally do but once again, more money. Make sure that your idea is marketable. Make sure that there is no easy way to circumvent it. One of the main reasons for the patent system beyond protecting your rights is to encourage someone else to come up with a better way to do it. All you need for a patent is to meet certain basic requirements: original inventer, utility and not obvious. Marketable is not a requirement. There are many many good ideas that no one cares about or is willing to part money with to acquire. Selling a few locally is way different from a successful marketing campaign. Marketing cost a lot of money!

Good luck!

The company I work for started in the same way as you almost 20 years ago. We also make camera systems, these are based around low light detection down to single photons & high speed, up to 500million fps so far.

Our systems are not patented but we have found ourselves a niche market where the success of the product is based on the skill of designing & building it. Other larger companies could replicate what we do but are not interested in the low volumes or customisation of the products.

If you can establish a good customer base & a good reputation the customers will come to you.

Good luck to you, I hope you achieve the success you hope for.

My understanding of this is that once you have put the idea in the public domain you can no longer patent it,If you read the patent application booklet it tells you to Not disclose the idea to anyone not even the patent office you have to describe what it does & any relevant modifications to obtain a "patent pending" certificate,then you can submit drawings ect.for full patent.

Forgot to log on my reply 12

Bazzer

Not correct for US:

Filing deadline

the more claims you have the stronger the patent.

good luck also online you can get all paper work needed from patent office and help by phone they will talk to you. again good luck

A patent does not stop people copying your product. And even if they do, you are unlikely to know about it. You first have to find out. Then you use the patent as a weapon to get a court order to prevent them copying you - or make them pay you royalties to use your invention.

The counter-weapon is for them to demonstrate 'prior knowledge' - which means they knew of details of your invention prior to the date you applied. Which in your case will be easy because your product is already on the market.

Which will become obvious at the outset when the 'search' is carried out by the Patent office - which in turn means your application is likely to be disqualified. You could argue the point, but a patent, if granted under these conditions, would be hard to defend in court (and expensive) against a powerful competitor - except that they might take the cheap and easy route (if your invention is valuable to them) to buy you out!

We are a 'one-man-band' and we patented our products 24 years ago (long expired now). In our case our products were likely to be sold in large numbers on a regular basis to large companies. A lot of research and development went into producing marketable working products - which we sold at a price that embodied a mark-up to recover our development costs - but pitched at competitive rates compared to alternative solutions available to the customer.

But the main reason for our patents were to protect us from unscrupulous customers.

By that I mean it would be easy for our customers to take our designs and products and pass them to a 'tame' supplier to copy - which would be easy because we supplied full technical drawings and used standard components (assembled in a way that gave us our invention) - that with little skill and hindsight - anybody could copy - and at much lower unit selling prices - because there were no development costs to recover.

In reality it did not happen quite like that. Nobody copied us as such, maybe because of the patent (we don't know). We had competitors who came up with their own ideas and products. Being 'big' they loaded their prices with overheads that did not off-set savings in bulk buying - so they ended up competing with us at similar prices.

On balance I would say the patents gave us 'peace-of-mind' rather like an insurance policy.

Our patents have lapsed now, and nobody seems to be copying us as such. We are still small, filling a niche market. Our competitors are not interested in fighting us for such small turn-over - in fact, in head-on situations, they often offer our products rather than compete - and we back off.

Anyway, good luck. But 'prior' disclosure is likely to stop you getting a patent.

As most people have said, you should focus on making a better product and giving good service. Patents are for big business.

I hope this helps

"The counter-weapon is for them to demonstrate 'prior knowledge' - which means they knew of details of your invention prior to the date you applied. Which in your case will be easy because your product is already on the market."

Based on information on his location "Coffeyville KS (Kansas)" he appears to be in the United States. So this statement is not correct.

The patent laws may be different in the UK. Are they first to file? Here it is first to conceive.

If you do patent in US then you can only force the guy not to sale in US but he can copy and sale rest of world. Policing is done only in the country of patent. When we have global patent then based on what countries the patent covers those are the country are enforcible.

If it is inside component/components then hard to find out. Best of luck with the patent and patent enforcement

CR4 Admin Deleted Post Reason: Spam

If the company is doing so great then stop being so cheap as to try to steal advertising - though I realize stealing something may not seem wrong to you - it is.

For everyone - rather than post WAGs just look at the link in post 14 - the time for filing for a patent is probably long past.

Pete, at the very least document all your work, step by step. If you date, chronicle all your work you have that documentation and that can be of help in the US.If your looking to Export anywhere out of the US. I would say all bets are off, even if you can prove this is your product or products, first try and locate the Foreign company, second it sounds to me they have deeper pockets.I've Exported for many years and import, it's tricky can be tough but rewarding be careful. You should be able to strike a deal with your suppliers on Wholesale pricing, I can't imagine domestic suppliers commanding retail price structure. Do you Gentleman have any business backround?

Enclose the component in a box with "Warranty Void if opened". Most people are afraid of that.

Patents are good for 50 or so years after that others can copy it. If you can't patent then sell the rights. Better do it soon before you get reversed engineered!

Patent it here in the Philippines... it's not as costly, at least I don't think so!

Patents issue for 18 years in the US.

buy back the ones you sold.

That is sure sound advice!

What in the world would it accomplish? Nothing!

" Though they are pricey, around $10K, and the economic disaster has not helped us out any"

Don't worry, keep selling your creation. Your competitors can only copy, but you have the ability to create. As you grow by selling, down the line you could modify your present creation and by which time you will have enough resources to fund for taking rights (if your experience, by then, calls for a need to do so).

This is an important point

the OP may be misinterpreting the true nature of his business,

are you selling technology or solutions? the ability to rearrange existing technologies, to provide effective solutions is many times more valuable

We are definitely selling a solution in this case. We are also evolving with better features constantly.

I wish I could give out all the details here, but that does not seem safe should an unscroupulous company decide to snatch it up.

I have seen many good answers and suggestions here.

Regards,

Pete Olsen

Some have it correct, you cannot patent an item that has even had the plans deliberatly made public and certainly not one that has already been sold, though you can patent improvements to the design to gain some protection. as for parts, I have access to over a hundred thousand parts globally from manufacturers, go to our site and email a couple of basic parts you find expensive, and i will see what if i can help or if you are just building white elephants.

Archie

Enerventure.com