Posts Tagged: "inventor mistakes"

There is a terrible injustice done by those non-attorney and/or non-agent services, and it amazes me that individuals are so ready to believe inventors and scientists who have a handful of patents and haven’t read many (if any) cases. You go to an experiences accountant for tax issues, when you feel sick you go to an experienced doctor, if your car breaks down you want an experienced mechanic, yet when you have an innovation that you dream could be worth many thousands, or millions, of dollars you go to an inventor who has little or no experience drafting a patent application? At which point exactly does that start to sound like a good idea? After your third martini at lunch?

By far, most inventions are improvements upon other known devices or solutions. In fact, whenever I teach patent law courses I tell students that in their career as a patent attorney they are unlikely to ever come across a pioneering invention (i.e., first of its kind, revolutionary invention). Even the great Thomas Edison, the most prolific inventor in US history, rarely came up with pioneering inventions. What Edison really had a knack for was taking something that someone else had come up with and making it extraordinarily better. So the first lesson here is that inventors can and most frequently are those who improve upon the work of others. The second lesson is that those inventors who focus on improvements can be quite successful indeed!

There are always trade-offs in design work. Design features often conflict. For example, a big heavy vehicle is usually safer but the gas mileage is lower. But one of the things I have learned in my years as a product developer is that decisions have consequences. The biggest consequence of making a decision in product development is that the field of all subsequent decisions is contracted. That is, you reduce your list of options. It seems that ideas condense from a gas to a solid. They start out in a nebulous intangible form and condense into a solid physical entity. So bottom line, postpone any decisions on how to do things, initially. Brainstorming is the first order of business.

It generally takes a lot longer and costs a lot more to get an idea licensed. New ideas are hard to sell. The capable companies are not interested because they are generating their own ideas. The not-so-capable companies might be interested but would probably drop the ball. Most workers at these companies just want to make it through the day. An unfinished product looks more like work than an opportunity. It is also risky. Employees are not compensated for risks but are punished for failure.

    An updated version of this article is available at:   https://ipwatchdog.com/2013/08/17/patent-drafting-what-is-the-patentable-feature/id=44713/    

    An updated version of this article is available at: https://ipwatchdog.com/2014/05/17/patent-drafting-not-as-easy-as-you-think/id=49638/    

Increasingly on the Internet invention advertising is taking an odd and seemingly inexplicable turn toward advising independent inventors to not seek patent protection, which is undeniably bad advice that will undoubtedly cause much disappointment and heart break for those who actually follow it.  But why is it that you are starting to see more and more advertisements that say it is…

    An updated version of this article is available at: https://ipwatchdog.com/2012/08/04/27128/id=27128/    

Over the years I have received quite a number of e-mail inquiries and telephone calls from inventors who are looking for information and advice. Typically, the initial communication starts off with the inventor saying that they have an invention that they know will be well received in the market and that they are looking for a patent attorney who can…

I am frequently asked the same or similar question with respect to patent applications by independent inventors — How much information do I have to include in a patent application?  Sometimes this question is prefaced by something like — I have the concept but I am no scientist and I don’t know how to actually create the invention. The first…

It is not at all uncommon for inventors to want to attempt to draft and file patent applications on their own.  This is in no small part due to the fact that if an independent inventor goes to a patent attorney the attorney will typically require somewhere from $5,000 to $10,000 up front prior to commencing representation.  This is a…