I have found one thing common among most Inventors. The majority are paying thousands for services they don’t need if they want a company to license their product. The Invention Submission Companies all push get a patent search done, file a provisional patent, file a full patent, do a market analysis report, have CAD drawings done. Why? Because you have to pay for these things and they provide a service doing just that.
Here are some things those sites neglected to tell you.
You can do a patent search yourself using the patent office website or Googles new patent search. The bad thing is if you don’t find anything listed it doesn’t mean a provisional patent hasn’t been filed on it or a patent was issued, but they paid to not have it published. You just can’t see it. You can spend all of your money on a patent only to find out someone else has a lock on your spot. Also, you will find out that when you license your idea to a company they may want to improve on your idea or modify it in a way that your patent no longer covers the final product. So, another patent has to be filed. Your oringinal patent money was wasted. I have 7 items on the market with 4 more licensed so far this year and didn’t spend a dime on the patents. The companies licensing the ideas paid for the patents out of their pockets. The patent covers the product they are producing.
A provisional patent is cheaper, but starts a 1 year clock. If you don’t get it licensed in that year you HAVE to apply for a full patent or your idea becomes public domain and anyone can use it. Once you start the full patent you are going to spend thousands to get it completed. Do you have the resources to pay for a full patent?
Full patents are great if you are a large company and can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend your patent. A patent normally takes over a year to complete if you are lucky. Some take years. The average person can not afford to go up against a Disney or Mattel sized company to fight off knockoffs. You will lose any profit you made and be in court for years. If you don’t think that is true look at all the knockoffs of patented items on the shelf right now. Most of the time you are better off making sure you grab the largest market share and branding to keep knockoffs to a minimum.
A market analysis is a waste of your money unless you are planning to produce and sell the item yourself. If you do one today and you find a company to license your idea they will do their own market analysis and not take your word for it on yours. So, you are paying for something they will do anyway. In the past 5 years I have had only 1 company ask me if I had done a market analysis on that product idea. I asked if they needed me to do one. He said no, they would do their own.
Plus, how long is your market analysis good for? If it has been a year since you had one done and you still haven’t found a company to produce your product is your market analysis still valid? Can you afford to have one done every 6 months or yearly?
You don’t always need Cad drawings or some other technical engineering drawing to get a point across. If you are doing electronic circuitry or something extremely high tech it would probably be advisable. If you are producing a low tech item or board game you don’t have to be as technical. All of my drawings are two dimensional. They look professional, get the point across, are in color and have concise explantions included describing the items function and benefits.
STOP PAYING OUT THE NOSE FOR UNNEEDED SERVICES! YOU CAN DO THIS WITHOUT PAYING EVERYONE ELSE AND GOING BROKE!
http://www.rogerbrown.net
