Quick question for anyone who has been looking to get a Patent granted. Is it worth paying to have a Patent search done (company I'm involved with is quoting £245 for a 20 day turn around or £445 for a 10 day turn around)? Or is it something that can be done personally for no cost? I'm 99% certain my idea has not been done before and it doesn't seem likely that there's a patent sitting there waiting for a buyer as this product would have likely hit the market already if there was. How does one go about a patent search? I'm confident that my product will sell well but I'm totally out of funds at the moment and time is of the essence, I need to do as much as possible for as little as possible and would love to get a patent pending and then spend what I do have on a prototype so I can take it to kickstarter. Any help greatly appreciated.
Make them sign an NDA. These scummy cunts just love to get ideas and in that 20 day turn around sell them off to big companies that then patent them and never actually use the patent.
A patent gives you the right to sue whoever copies your idea. If you don't have $$$ to sue, your paying them to take your idea.... even if someone doesn't steal it, the Chinese will copy it. I've heard about this happening multiple times from a few of my instructors/other students. IMO your best bet is to try and sell the idea to a company that might benefit from it.
You have to do a patent search - it's the first step. Why are you using a third party, though? Do it all yourself! http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/patent/p-applying/p-after/p-search.htm Don't forget you'd have to file in every territory you want to have your patent applicable in, and some territories are expensive.
Some advice I had from engineers who wanted to go down a similar route was basically to give up on your dreams because it will cost you a fortune and get nothing to show for it as they lost a lot of time and money on their particular venture. Balls to that, you can save a fortune doing the papers yourself and if you do lose money, at least you won't lose as much. The new unified (mostly) europe patent system which is coming in to effect soon will greatly reduce international complexity and costs too. The terms you search for may not be the terms described in the patents though so be mindful of that. You need to be thorough enough in your explanaation to address your specific concern but broad enough to allow room for interpretation, this is where a second opinion does become worthwhile but you can always discuss it with friends, or enemies, or basically whoever isn't a yes man. You can also protect bad ideas too, but bear in mind a good idea won't automatically make you rich. I've had ideas which have never been done before, some which eventually popped up several years later and if I had the funds to do the original search and filing I'd have a small chunk of change by now. Heck if I sold my Katana I could easily file another proven design right off the bat, but I guess I have some fucked up priorities!
I'm working on another patent at the moment, and while there are some differences between US and UK patents, it is possible to do everything yourself. However, be warned that it is VERY time consuming for a novice to do it, and can vary greatly depending on what you are trying to patent. And if you screw up the simplest thing, you've just paid a lot of money for something worthless. For me, I have a background in business law, consulted on some patent issues and currently have a couple in progress. Even with (what I consider) somewhat decent patent experience, an exhaustive patent search took me a couple of weeks.
This is true. The Chinese will copy/bootleg anything to make money. Honk Kong is the capital for bootlegs.
Thanks guys. Having spoken to someone at a party last night who has gone down this route, I told him about my idea and he recommends I just prototype it and try to sell it as fast as possible and then just suffer the consequences when it does get copied, at least I'll take a good market share to begin with. I'm on such a tight budget I can only really do one or the other, patent or prototype. I don't want to reveal what the idea is but I've got my hands on some mouldable plastic and some parts which might do the trick. If I can get a proto working I could then legitimately take it to Kickstarter along with a 3D render of the finished product...any thoughts?
Just incase anyone was wondering. This was the idea which is now on Kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...your-iphone-the-airdock?ref=recently_launched
I think you'd have much better luck getting backers if you went to kickstarter with a final product design, but even then you may have an uphill struggle due to either lack of exposure, or lack of interest. But don't let that put you off, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again
Yeah it's not going well. I think Kickstarter is a bit more upmarket than it used to be. When I'm back in full time work ill throw a bit more money into it. In the meantime I'm actually just enjoying using the device myself.
