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When is an idea worthy of patenting?
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I just had a really great idea on how to fix a problem.

This solution does not exist.

Are consumer good patents worth anything these days? Seems like as soon as an idea comes out there’s a Chinese knock off on Amazon.

How do you determine if it’s worth trying to patent a thing you came up with.

(Someone I know patented a very different idea with a similar technology- but not someone I would want to have business dealings with- and in a very different product space).
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Moonrocket wrote:
I just had a really great idea on how to fix a problem.

This solution does not exist.

Are consumer good patents worth anything these days? Seems like as soon as an idea comes out there’s a Chinese knock off on Amazon.

How do you determine if it’s worth trying to patent a thing you came up with.

(Someone I know patented a very different idea with a similar technology- but not someone I would want to have business dealings with- and in a very different product space).

I had a Mensa level employee at one point who was always coming up with great ideas and rushing in to have me sign/witness them.

I assisted him in receiving patents for 2 of these hundreds of ideas.

All in costs were about $5k for one and $45k for another.

I would take him through a very "shark tank" like process (before there was a shark tank) before we went very far with any of them.

What problem are you solving, who is the end user, and most importantly (this was never his focus) HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY on this.

These would be my concerns more than if it will be knocked off.

I suggest you find the right devils advocate and go through this process with them.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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I am not in consumer goods, but would ask the following questions -

1. Does it pass the "obviousness" test?
2. Can you afford to pay the legal and filing fees?
3. Can you defend the patent?
4. Can you identify where you would get value?

I have a number of patents, but they are all owned by the companies I work or have worked for.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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No expert at all but I applied for and rec a patent about 25 years ago in a filter design for speakers (home or studio audio). One of the key things I remember is that the patent is only as good as your ability and resources to protect it. Given that it can be a costly and time consuming process, I still went ahead with it because I wanted it as a marketing tool "this subwoofer utilizes our patented Synthesized Bandpass System etc etc".
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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If you intend to develop and produce the idea into an actual product, another option is the trade secret. Just keep your idea under wraps as best you can through NDAs and the like until you've developed it so far that you have a natural market advantage and/or the resources to protect a patent.

If you just want to sell off the idea without developing it yourself, then I think a patent would be the way to go.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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In addition to obviousness as someone mentioned earlier, there is the question of novelty - is this truly a new idea?

You can do a bit of due diligence yourself by seeing what's already out there. FreePatentsOnline is decent for IP searching at no cost. It wouldn't be a bad idea to create an account - that way, you can save your searches for later reference, as a thorough search will go through several 'layers'.

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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Can you make enough money to pay for the patent and to defend it?

Put another way, if I had this problem how much would I pay for it?
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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one of the costs of "paying to defend" is related to those who are trying to "steal" your idea/patent.

In my experience, one of the even more difficult issues is:

after you set up a network of (for instance), licensees who have agreed to pay you for the use of your patented idea how do you enforce the patent with them?

You'd be surprised how many otherwise honest parties will be happy to sign on to your original idea and pay you for it......... only to conclude at some point that it wasn't that brilliant and they "could have thought of that" or unilaterally decide that you've "made enough" off your idea.

your friends can be as difficult as your enemies once money becomes involved.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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To add to some of the points already made: another consideration is how hard would it be to "invent around" the patent? A pharmaceutical patent may be hugely valuable because it is not so easy to invent some other drug (or tweak to the patented drug) that does the same thing as the patented drug.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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My first job out of Industrial Design school involved designing around patents.
Two well known industrial designers ran the company. One was a prof at the school I went to.

If the product has legs then a knockoff will appear a few days after it's shown at any industrial fair. published in a trade magazine, advertised in a product catalogue.
It's depressing....I quit after three days.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Moonrocket wrote:
I just had a really great idea on how to fix a problem.

This solution does not exist.

Are consumer good patents worth anything these days? Seems like as soon as an idea comes out there’s a Chinese knock off on Amazon.

How do you determine if it’s worth trying to patent a thing you came up with.

(Someone I know patented a very different idea with a similar technology- but not someone I would want to have business dealings with- and in a very different product space).

these days you can patent almost anything (even obvious) if you want to pay the filing fees. The Patent Office is incentivized to accept every application, the more patents they grant the more funding they can ask for.

As far whether to do it, can you generate money with this idea? Is the money you are going to generate greater than the cost of the application process?
If no, is it worth it for "reputation" purposes, "our company has X patents"?

I have my name on a couple of patents that I think fall into the later category. they are not particularly useful and I don't think the company is putting them to any use (we can still use the idea without a patent, we have plenty of records of when the ideas were put into use to protect from others patenting the idea), but they wanted to get X number of patents.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Sadly, probably not.

The smart scenarios are really two.

First, you are going to develop the product yourself and want to protect yourself.

Second, patent it and then hope that some large company violates it and then sue them.

Because if you try and license your patent, most companies if they like the idea will then just find away around it. So the best hope is never make them aware of it and hope they mess up.

The whole thing is kinda sad and doesn’t work how you would hope.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Lots of good answers already...

I have my name on several patents, all owned by the companies I worked for at the time. As is typically the case, we (engineers / designer) came up with a new process / components to solve a particular problem that had not been done before. In most of these case, the stuff patented was going in a product and would be one of our "key differentiators," something that set our machine apart from the competition.

Once you patent something, it is public record - all the details of your design / process / whatever... Depending on what it is, it may be very easy for me to come along and change one key thing, then file a new patent for my new-and-improved design. This happens all the time. So really think about what sets your idea apart, how it could be modified, etc... A good patent lawyer will help.

As others as said figure out where you want to go with this. A patent gets you just that, a patent, nothing else, no income, etc... Your patent lasts twenty years, then it's free game.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [michael Hatch] [ In reply to ]
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michael Hatch wrote:
My first job out of Industrial Design school involved designing around patents.
Two well known industrial designers ran the company. One was a prof at the school I went to.

If the product has legs then a knockoff will appear a few days after it's shown at any industrial fair. published in a trade magazine, advertised in a product catalogue.
It's depressing....I quit after three days.

This is my concern. It’s a fairly large object and with the amount of material that would go into it - I just don’t see how it couldn’t be super easy to undercut the cost structure I could create by a Chinese counterfeiter.

(I have set up high tech production lines in Singapore and China- so have some experience in factories overseas).

That said I want this large object and bet I could sell one to a lot of sports families.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [windywave] [ In reply to ]
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windywave wrote:
Can you make enough money to pay for the patent and to defend it?

Put another way, if I had this problem how much would I pay for it?

In a few years you will be my target market. I bet you’d pay at least $1,800 for it.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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You can always apply for a provisional patent. Relatively low cost, good for 1 year to let you test the market and determine if a patent application is worth the cost.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Moonrocket wrote:
windywave wrote:
Can you make enough money to pay for the patent and to defend it?

Put another way, if I had this problem how much would I pay for it?


In a few years you will be my target market. I bet you’d pay at least $1,800 for it.


Windy’s wife is nodding her head. She says they would pay double.
Last edited by: Barks&Purrs: Jan 23, 23 20:02
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Seems you have all the answers you need.

Another option is a defensive publication. This prevents someone from patenting your idea. I have a few of those, as the company did not want to pay for a patent but also didn't want someone else to patent it. A few are around analysis techniques, that our equipment suppliers would implement.

It was briefly mentioned here, but another issue with a patent is how easy is it to determine if someone is breaking your patent? Many ideas become trade secrets, because its just to hard to tell if someone stole your patent and is using it. (a lot of software and processing stuff)

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Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [GREG_n_SD] [ In reply to ]
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also a provisional patent shows priority and once published says it was already in the public domain meaning that someone else can not then patent the exact same thing. The bad thing is that to have a solid patent requires a really good background search, this is what costs a lot of money. A patent can be defeated if someone can find, in any place on earth, a document that shows your idea was known prior to your filing. It can be in some obscure Mongolian news paper, it does not matter, if it was presented into the public domain then you loose your priority. On top of that if you think you can defend your patent against a big company good luck. They have lawyers on staff or on retainer that will bury you and your legal team and cost you way more than you will likely ever make. No patent is is golden ticket and you have also to remember patents are geographical and cost a lot to cover larger areas of the world. They just protect you from someone copying your design and selling it into your market where you have the patent. They can sell it anywhere else your patent is not in force, like China, India, etc. Trade secrets are only useful if the design can not be reverse engineered easily.

The shark tank assessment is a very good idea.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Moonrocket wrote:
I just had a really great idea on how to fix a problem.

This solution does not exist.

Are consumer good patents worth anything these days? Seems like as soon as an idea comes out there’s a Chinese knock off on Amazon.

How do you determine if it’s worth trying to patent a thing you came up with.

(Someone I know patented a very different idea with a similar technology- but not someone I would want to have business dealings with- and in a very different product space).

You should post all the details about the idea here. Then we can all tell you whether it's already out there, worth patenting, how easy it would be to design around, etc. :-)

On a more serious note, if you file, in the US, then you're only protected in the US, not internationally.
There is a mechanism that allows you to file for a patent and it gets registered in a bunch of other countries so you're essentially in those countries' patent pending/evaluation queue. Gives your broader protection than any single jurisdiction.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [Moonrocket] [ In reply to ]
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Moonrocket wrote:
michael Hatch wrote:
My first job out of Industrial Design school involved designing around patents.
Two well known industrial designers ran the company. One was a prof at the school I went to.

If the product has legs then a knockoff will appear a few days after it's shown at any industrial fair. published in a trade magazine, advertised in a product catalogue.
It's depressing....I quit after three days.


This is my concern. It’s a fairly large object and with the amount of material that would go into it - I just don’t see how it couldn’t be super easy to undercut the cost structure I could create by a Chinese counterfeiter.

(I have set up high tech production lines in Singapore and China- so have some experience in factories overseas).

That said I want this large object and bet I could sell one to a lot of sports families.

If it involves teleportation to the sportsing location or a direct video feed so I can both cheer and do actual, useful things with my time - I'm all in.
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Re: When is an idea worthy of patenting? [40-Tude] [ In reply to ]
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Quote:
You should post all the details about the idea here. Then we can all tell you whether it's already out there, worth patenting, how easy it would be to design around, etc. :-)

On a more serious note, if you file, in the US, then you're only protected in the US, not internationally.
There is a mechanism that allows you to file for a patent and it gets registered in a bunch of other countries so you're essentially in those countries' patent pending/evaluation queue. Gives your broader protection than any single jurisdiction.


if you file a provisional patent now, you have a year to file a PCT patent application. Then you have 30 months from your provisional patent to select where you want to file in. The government fees for a provisional around around $150, for a PCT they are around $2500 (you stll have to pay the national fees for each country. USA is around $800, filing in the EU would be around another $2500).

At the end of the day, unless you are in a place where you can manufacture + sell the item you should not patent it. If you can show sales data, you are going to be able to license the product and recoup your patent loses + around 2-5% of sales.

These types of products come in two buckets. 1) products that can be manufactured for cheap/sold cheap (3-D printed stuff). - This is going to be volume based, and easier to start up. 2) products that are expensive to make, expensive to buy. These are harder to show sales data because molds of products end up costing 50K+ - The patent cost is negligible.
Last edited by: sosayusall: Jan 24, 23 10:05
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