Hey all, I am in a position to offer a product to the market on my own. I would rather sell this idea to a manufacturer and just feel good about what I have done, alonog with make some money on a product not waisted. I was curiouse about the poor mans patent. I dont know the true legality of this and was wondering if anyone has any information on details for this process. Can anyone shed some light, or should I just spend the cash for the lawyer fees?
Thank you
patents of any means are only as good as your means to enforce it. Meaning if you cannot afford to have one done properly you do not have enough to take any company to court over it.
so it would be as valuable as a peice of toilet paper if you catch my drift.
Patents mean very little in the grand scheme of things, change this, this and tweek this a little, and wal-la you have gotten around that patent. Sad to say I have seen this done more than once in my brief professional life. Some are as simlpe as changing the location or orientation of the handle or other interface components. All depends on how it was written.
Dear ML, have you ever heard of people buying designs from designers? Is it something that can be done? For example, i was working on a project of my own once with a friend of mine, and the manufacturer had shown us a booklet of information that one of their clients had completed in order to sell the product to another manufacturer. This man had told us that with all the work they had put together they stood to make $1.3 million off of someone who was interested. Now I am not looking at the price as much as the idea that was brought up. Have you ever heard of this before or do you think this gentleman was not giving me all the information. I ask this because I would like to try it. What do you think?
Agree with ML - a poor mans patent is a bit of an oxymoron.
Companies are always looking for new ideas to implement, but typically they will not entertain anything from an outside source unless you have a patent or have applied for a patent. This protects you and the company and is certainly the norm for any reputable company. Certainly non-disclosure documents would also be involved.
As to how much money you could make, well you would need to develop the business plan along with the idea.
Remember coming up with the idea is actually the easiest part…implementing it successfully is the challenging part.
Remember coming up with the idea is actually the easiest part…implementing it successfully is the challenging part
Took the words out of my mouth.
Generally speaking to get 1mil out of a design that you will be selling/licensing to a company, you will need to have done your homework, and damn Thoroughly. You will need to define your market segmentation, have documentation and research proving the need, desire, and marketablility of the product. Have data validating the suggested retail price, have data validating the consumers desire for the final design and feature offering, have the product fully designed/engineered and ready to go to manufacturing. In some cases you will also need to have manufacturing quotes, and even projected and data supported sales volumes for the first yr or two of sales.
Dear ML, have you ever heard of people buying designs from designers? Is it something that can be done? For example, i was working on a project of my own once with a friend of mine, and the manufacturer had shown us a booklet of information that one of their clients had completed in order to sell the product to another manufacturer. This man had told us that with all the work they had put together they stood to make $1.3 million off of someone who was interested. Now I am not looking at the price as much as the idea that was brought up. Have you ever heard of this before or do you think this gentleman was not giving me all the information. I ask this because I would like to try it. What do you think?
Yes people do it all the time, they are called inventors. However few ever make it past the initial meeting with who ever will give them 5 minutes. Those who do have as 51 said firm plans, vision, and data to support thier final designs. I work with inventors from time to time to develop their product for just this purpose. However they usually make very little on the deal, for them it is more about getting the product on the market, any royalties they may gain is just gravey. All with exception of one man who was extreamly wealthy prior to his invention still work full time jobs, some living pay check to pay check.
How long have you had this idea? How far into the development are you? What is your experiance level designing and developing product?
Before you spend any money on lawyer fees do a simple search of the patent office web site. See what things you can find that already exist, few ideas are truely original (no offence meant by this). then atleast when you go to talk to them if you still feel it is a viable and protectable sollution you can present these documents to the lawyer and have instant discussion about them.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-adv.htm you will also need to download and install this prog to view and print the image files of the patents…http://www.alternatiff.com/
The product in question began 5 years ago when I first started in the I.D. field professionally. Recently I felt the need to go back and revamp this idea due to interest from friends and colleagues. The market research is quit good, even though I am not a marketing guy, business plan is nonexistent at this point manufacturing and quotes are on the way and engineering and design work are complete. My earlier question of “what do you think of a poor mans patent?” maybe should be replaced with this. As a designer do you work on your own projects? If so how far do you like to take them? What is your greatest satisfaction with designing something for yourself?
I generally will take my personal projects through to funtional proptypes. Then if I can not get a licensing deal, I have the satisfaction and function of the item. However I have only been in this field professionally for slightly better than two years, so I have only 3 personal projects. Only one still has a chance for licensing at current, the others well will sit for now untill I can find some investors to help with the development of the software needed, as well as partnerships with certain other related/supported companies.
I have however assisted 6 inventors on sucessfully transitioning thier products in to the market. Mainly medical devices though, through federal SBIRC research grants. A grant given to develop usefull new medical/home land security technologies. The inventors generally have the grants when they contact the firm I work for so I have no advice on how to obtain one though.
In my limited experience with patents, I recall that you must begin filing for the patent within a year of a certain thing (technical term) happening. I am pretty sure that the “thing” is the first public disclosure, or it may be the creation of the idea. Not Sure, someone else may be able to help me here.
Now I imagine this is a hard rule for the patent office to enforce, but it could be a snag in your plans. If nothing else, get started on the patent process sooner than later to avoid this problem.