How do I materialize an idea for a product?

November 18, 2006 9:27 PM

I have an idea for an improvement on a current product. How do I materialize it?

The idea is a simple modification on a simple product. This change will allow the product to be used for another purpose. What steps do I take for patents, producing, and selling the product?

posted by h2 to work & money (11 comments total)

The first step is to disabuse yourself of the idea that a patent is even worth considering in this case.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:42 PM on November 18, 2006

There aren't any steps. You either set up a company and make it yourself, persuade an existing company to modify your product, or find a contract manufacturer and pay them to make it. Either way involves a lot of hard work, and a lot of risk.

Without knowing any more details, that's as much as can be said.
posted by cillit bang at 11:42 PM on November 18, 2006

Strong agreement with rhomboid above: The "million dollar idea" is a myth.

Make it, document the making of it, and then we'll talk patents.
posted by rokusan at 12:20 AM on November 19, 2006

If your idea is both patentable and marketable then ignore Rhomboid's advice, as it is wrong. If you have a marketable and patentable advance over a current product then you should file for a paten before contacting the company which makes the product. If your idea is not patentable, or only narrowly so, then things get much harder. Most companies won't talk to you unless you essentially sign away your rights, unless you can pitch your idea in such a way that they are motivated to sign a confidentiality agreement with you prior to seeing the details of your idea. If you truly believe in your idea, talk to a lawyer, the company will be lawyered up, so should you.
posted by caddis at 2:22 AM on November 19, 2006

It's not just my advice, it's Don Lancaster's, and I happen to value his opinion as an engineer and inventor a lot more than J Random Forum participant.

If you think that a patent in any way protects you from anything at all, you are delusional. It is a complete waste of time unless you are a Fortune 500-level company with an existing portfolio of thousands of patents and a staff of corporate lawyers on retainer -- and even then its value is only in negotiation with other large corporations, not in any direct way. And worse, it will probably guarantee that your idea goes nowhere, because no company will want anything to do with your idea at all once they get wind that it's encumbered by IP. Even then, ff it does turn out to be a decent idea, a patent is laughably easy to invalidate or work around, especially since the type of patents that individuals get are likely to have been poorly researched and trivial to invalidate. Lancaster goes over all this in his papers. You may as well flush money down the toilet.

If you believe that you have a good idea, you should work on creating and selling prototypes on a small scale yourself.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:49 AM on November 19, 2006

Dispel this myth.... patents equal riches! They are loosely correlated.

The most successful design I ever did had half a dozen clearly patentable features, but the client could not afford the expense of patenting.

It was an improvement to an existing successful consumer product.

His challenge was to market against a market leader with established distribution, money, inertia. He now owns 80% of the market, due more to his marketing genius than my technical innovation. Between the two, I'd choose marketing.

Patents are kind of useless. If you have a good idea, use a patent lawyer to make sure you're not stepping on anyone else's IP and then go figure out how to make a buck with your idea.
posted by FauxScot at 6:30 AM on November 19, 2006

OK, h2 should follow Rhomboid's advice and skip the patent. Instead h2 should invest untold thousands in marketing an upatented device, and then, if it starts to succeed, watch some big consumer company with brand recognition come in and copy the unpatented product leaving h2 nothing to do about it except try to outmarket the established marketing giant. Sounds like a plan.
posted by caddis at 6:54 AM on November 19, 2006

Assuming the process of invention is well documented (and is being undertaken in the US), h2 can file patents once he have a product on the market and gaining traction. If he has a proven product, he also has a chance of attracting investment that can, in part, help them defend the patent against any established company that tries to duplicate the invention. He'll also have revenue that could support litigation.

Waste time resources on getting the patent up front, and h2 may never get a product to market, or get it to market too late for it to make a difference.
posted by Good Brain at 9:25 AM on November 19, 2006

The alternative, caddis, is that h2 should take his limited funds and massive inexperience and find out how far it goes at $300 an hour, what I currently pay my patent attorney. Typical to budget $10,000 for a US patent.

Better to spend it on doing something than spend it on paper, IMO. I agree with rhomboid.

Another alternative... h2 goes hat in hand to someone he doesn't know, with his idea of questionable value and no prototype, and convince him that he should help make h2 rich?

Ideas are cheap and readily manufactured. I personally don't even bother remembering any that aren't directly related to my current projects.

When they occur to the average common man, they occur to those involved in a field. Mr. Common Man often confuses having an idea with having something worthwhile.

It's not the idea, it's the execution. Lacaster and Rhomboid are closer to the mark.
posted by FauxScot at 9:44 AM on November 19, 2006

I do agree that execution is as important if not more so than the idea itself. Nevertheless, you seem to be saying all ideas from individuals are worthless or have already been thought of by someone in the field, and thus by implication are saying forget about it and go do something else with your money. Many ideas from consumers are cockamamie, no doubt. However if someone has a good one they should pursue it. How to find out? Well, the patent attorney is a good first opinion, so are friends and relatives, but there you have to ask for honest criticism, not just having them tell you it's great because they like you. ("Would you condsider investing in it?")

What peeves me about Rhomboid's attitude is not the suspicion of patents, but the complete rejection, not "even worth considering." There are many people who pursue worthless patents, but that does not mean all patents by individuals are worthless. Getting one won't make you rich, but not having one leaves you without protection. I work in an area where we invest a lot of money in other people's ideas and our interest in those lacking intellectual property protection is practically nil. Why would we bother if someone else can just copy it and undercut our margins?

As for Lancaster's articles, they seem sort of childish and unsupported to me. I loved his TTL Cookbook. Perhaps he should stick to technology.

h2, I heartily recommend you start out by seeing a patent attorney. Do not fall for an invention promotion company, they are nearly if not entirely all scams. The $10k number above is about right, but it can be much less for simple inventions and when you are located in the mid-West or other lower cost legal environments. If you are shopping the idea around to manufacturers consider asking them to pay for the patent costs during the negotiations; some will, but often only in exchange for exclusive negotiations rights. Use an attorney for the negotiations, someone who has done it before, many patent attorneys have not.

Building a prototype is also good advice, especially if it is not intuitively obvious that it will work and work well. I would probably do that before hiring an attorney if the prototype is not going to sap too many resources. If it is, then perhaps talk to the attorney first for advice in your particular case.

Going it alone can be more lucrative, profits are bigger than royalties, but this route requires much more capital investment. Can you get backers? If you can not, think about what that may imply about the value of your idea. Attorneys can help here too, but sometimes for a little guy the bank is the best help as many have people who can show you how to write an effective business plan.
posted by caddis at 1:30 PM on November 19, 2006

Good idea on the patent search, caddis. It is a lot less expensive than the patent and has to be done, anyway. Still, it's about a grand, according to my last invoice.

I didn't mean that h2's idea sucked, but that his options are really limited. Folks do think that the idea is everything, but it is really only the tip of a big iceberg. When I did invention for hire (as a product design consultant), I wouldn't even deal with anyone who hadn't gone through at least one product development cycle. I'd ship them over to other startup consultants and let them do the training. It is costly, usually unsuccessful, full of problems, and takes longer than imaginable to do most anything, if you do it well.

As a matter of fact, it got to the point that what I mostly did was "concept demos", where I'd build a working model of the single biggest part of the idea so that clients could evaluate it and show it off to potential customers.

The richest inventors I have known (and that includes a bunch) were usually NOT protected by patents. One was, but they caused him to endure an antitrust action and he was continually litigating to maintain them. (He had 200 domestic and international patents.) They really are a mixed bag.

The best thing about an idea, to me, is that it stimulates the attitude of problem solving, whcih if it is nourished, can carry through to the problems of finding a buyer for the product and exploiting the creativity.

Unfortunately, most people who have an idea carry it only as far as cocktail party conversation.

I still have TTL Cookbook, too. Don't need it much these days!

I thought Lancaster's "publishing on demand" paradigm was prescient, BTW.
posted by FauxScot at 4:41 PM on November 19, 2006