Nolo has a little book called “Your Little Legal Companion: Helpful Advice for Life’s Big Events” that provides tips on how to handle situations from having a child in kindergarten to managing retirement.
The book has a section called “Having a Brilliant Idea” and here are the 10 tips that they offer:
1. Who’s going to buy it? Before anything else, think of the marketability of your idea. Marketability is “the single most important factor in commercializing an idea.” Before thinking of patents, research on who will potentially purchase the product resulting from your idea and how you are going to reach this market.
2. File a provisional patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office to give you a patent pending status for at least a year.
3. Keep it secret. You need to use “reasonable methods of secrecy” to protect your idea, including non-disclosure agreements and labelling your materials as confidential.
4. Patent protection is not equal to money. Only 3% of patent applications are turned into commercial products.
5. No trade, no trademark. Apparently, you cannot get your idea trademarked or service marked until you offer the product or service for sale. But you can reserve a trademark (trademarks are confusing for me — it is surprising that not one of Nolo’s tips on this book is hire a lawyer).
6. Search, and hope you will not find. Just because you don’t see your idea in stores does not mean it hasn’t been invented before. Search the patent office records at USPTO or hire a professional patent searcher to check if no one has patented your idea before.
7. Patents and trademarks are only the start. Getting patents or trademarks only give you the right to go after those who infringe on your idea. You still have to go after the infringers, and that means money.
8. Is your idea feasible? The first question of anyone thinking of licensing your idea is how much it will cost to manufacture your product. If the cost per unit is higher than competing products, you are not likely to get the deal — even if your idea is brilliant.
9. There will be deductions. If you go for licensing, watch out for a long list of deductions before coming up with your royalty amount.
10. Have any more ideas? Successful inventors come up with lots of ideas; they don’t rely on just one.
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