What's my great idea worth and how do i pitch it without it getting stolen?

[Bryan]

My mistake. Thanks for correcting me.
I haven't got much experience with patents so not familiar with the process in depth, but I would assume, prototype or no prototype, the process is still relatively lengthy and expensive, and therefore inaccessible for the "average joe"?

[akirk]

I have taken products to market:
1 - idea
2 - development of concept
3 - patent
4 - development of prototype
5 - chunk of VC money
6 - development of product
7 - licensing of IP / patent to a market leader product company
8 - development of product to market
9 - sale of product
10 - licensing income

1-5 were sequential
6 - 8 overlapped as the licensee helped with development as a part of the deal...

key points though...
1 - 2 were kept within the company (me & partner)
4 didn't even begin until 3 was in...
5 was not interested until 3 was in process and searches were back (so wasn't granted, but little likelihood of conflict with others)
5 was not interested until 4 was completed...

so, 1 & 2 to do 3
after 3 you have some value in the business - before, none.

after 4 the value increases as you have proof of concept & IP - assuming a viable market and business plan then 5 is far less challenging...

value of business is established at 5 based on rate of investment for equity

6 uses VC funds and consolidates value of business - but doesn't increase it hugely

7 increases value

8 consolidates value

9 / 10 increases value of business - or drops rapidly if the market rejects the product...



for product - read physical product / or other... (could be online website)

Alasdair

[akirk]

My mistake. Thanks for correcting me.
I haven't got much experience with patents so not familiar with the process in depth, but I would assume, prototype or no prototype, the process is still relatively lengthy and expensive, and therefore inaccessible for the "average joe"?

If you write it yourself (not necessarily advisable!) then initial first year registration which gives you the important first date is free
this may be enough to get funding - or if you write it badly, it may be enough to kill your company by making it impossible to patent again

patents can be reduced in scope after application, but not increased...

Alasdair

[Chabrenas]

If you write it yourself (not necessarily advisable!)

I'd say definitely not, unless you are some kind of lawyer in your day job. The structure is straightforward enough, but the language is legalese. However, it shouldn't be too expensive to find a patent lawyer to transcribe it if you use everyday language but get the structure right. It's a hierarchy starting with a broad claim, followed by ever more restricted instances of that claim, and what gets granted is often one of the lower levels of the hierarchy.

[EDIT] ...and of course there's a preamble, describing the problem being addressed, limitations of current solutions, etc.,

[akirk]

I have written one - fortunately never had to use it but would agree - we normally get a patent chappie / chapess to do it

Alasdair

[mikeb]

If you write it yourself (not necessarily advisable!) then initial first year registration which gives you the important first date is free
this may be enough to get funding - or if you write it badly, it may be enough to kill your company by making it impossible to patent again

patents can be reduced in scope after application, but not increased...

Alasdair

IP lawyers , like other branches of legal profession deliberately and unnecessarily scare people into trying to drum up work for themselves.

But It is not a hard process, at least in the initial stages.. For one thing , on the first filing (which you can download forms from patent site) you do not need to file claims: they come later.

It is important to be thorough - that is searching all relevant patents both from description and patent classes, but by finding other solutions to a similar problem you can find the patent classes to search, and the searches are online.

The patents can be downloaded, and similar patents are a very good guide to how to create your own.
Also the patent office provides an instruction document

At this stage the documents are not public. So it can be someone "beat you to it" so it is really important to get something in to establish your "Priority date"

[crabfoot]

I had a good idea once, a stroke of genius, caused by somebody else discontinuing a product which was intended to provide supplementary minerals for cows.

I invented a type of cement, which could be impregnated with minerals, and placed inside a cow to release those minerals slowly, over a period of years.

I told the MD about it - he gave me a great big heap of earache about my stupid idea for about ten minutes. After a couple of hours in which he thought about it, he came back to me and apologised for being so harsh. A fine idea, he said, but the company did not have the technology to exploit it, and I should think about what could be done with the existing equipment that we had to hand.

A wee bit further along the line, I got a telephone call from some optimist at the Laboratory of the Government Chemist. They had been told that they had to become self-sufficient. He was looking to sell me services that I didn't need, and asking for any "free ideas" that I might have. So - I told him there was nothing they were offering that I needed, then I told him about my cement, complete with experimental details about how I made it, and why I knew it was a viable product.

He wrote me a letter of thanks, which I recall discarding about 20-odd years ago thinking "fine lot of good that's done for me".

Meantime, it appears that my idea was the only one the LGC got which was worth pursuing. They worked on it, and have dozens (literally) of patented applications that use it, for a plethora of situations. For example, if you have prostate cancer, you get a bolus of crabby's cement stuffed inside you every four years to slow-release the drug you need.

It makes me feel good that my idea was used for the public benefit, was useful to the world in general, and kept the LGC going as an entity that does research which can help us all.

What narks me is that I threw that letter of thanks away - I have no proof that the bolus cement was my idea. I got a couple of "friends" to make informal enquiries on my behalf about 25 years ago, they were told that nobody around knew where the original idea came from.

That thing was a big idea. A new drug form. Think about it - you get tablets, capsules, injections, ointments, suppositories, syrups and powders, mostly. Other forms have come and gone in the last century. Some bright spark invented "cachets" - drugs enclosed in rice paper. That was the way they made those sherbet-filled "flying saucers" that some of you bought as kids (because there had to be a use for the old machines).

I can live with the fact that I gave my best idea of a lifetime to the nation. I just wish I had known it was my best idea ever, before I did that.

[mikeb]

I had a good idea once, a stroke of genius, caused by somebody else discontinuing a product which was intended to provide supplementary minerals for cows.

I invented a type of cement, which could be impregnated with minerals, and placed inside a cow to release those minerals slowly, over a period of years.

I told the MD about it - he gave me a great big heap of earache about my stupid idea for about ten minutes. After a couple of hours in which he thought about it, he came back to me and apologised for being so harsh. A fine idea, he said, but the company did not have the technology to exploit it, and I should think about what could be done with the existing equipment that we had to hand.

A wee bit further along the line, I got a telephone call from some optimist at the Laboratory of the Government Chemist. They had been told that they had to become self-sufficient. He was looking to sell me services that I didn't need, and asking for any "free ideas" that I might have. So - I told him there was nothing they were offering that I needed, then I told him about my cement, complete with experimental details about how I made it, and why I knew it was a viable product.

He wrote me a letter of thanks, which I recall discarding about 20-odd years ago thinking "fine lot of good that's done for me".

Meantime, it appears that my idea was the only one the LGC got which was worth pursuing. They worked on it, and have dozens (literally) of patented applications that use it, for a plethora of situations. For example, if you have prostate cancer, you get a bolus of crabby's cement stuffed inside you every four years to slow-release the drug you need.

It makes me feel good that my idea was used for the public benefit, was useful to the world in general, and kept the LGC going as an entity that does research which can help us all.

What narks me is that I threw that letter of thanks away - I have no proof that the bolus cement was my idea. I got a couple of "friends" to make informal enquiries on my behalf about 25 years ago, they were told that nobody around knew where the original idea came from.

That thing was a big idea. A new drug form. Think about it - you get tablets, capsules, injections, ointments, suppositories, syrups and powders, mostly. Other forms have come and gone in the last century. Some bright spark invented "cachets" - drugs enclosed in rice paper. That was the way they made those sherbet-filled "flying saucers" that some of you bought as kids (because there had to be a use for the old machines).

I can live with the fact that I gave my best idea of a lifetime to the nation. I just wish I had known it was my best idea ever, before I did that.

Sadly that is the way it is - I have even had patents stolen, where I have not actually given the idea away!

If it makes you teel any better you are in with some famous names:

- the government stole frank whittles jet engine patent "in the national interest" and worse still - gave it to the americans:

- whatever you are led to believe - fleming did not invent penicillin, he was more or less peripheral to the discovery, but he took the credit from something done by others , parts of the actual team wanted to patenti it, others kept to the "educational ideal" - operning the door for fleming to take the credit instead.


(Actually the ancient chinese really invented it , because they knew that "moss from the north wall of a churchyard" had anti septic properties., it would be 2 millenia before anyone knew why...)

The history of invention is littered with wrong accreditations..

Having met a lot of "angel investors" it is one of the things I dislike about them with a passion - many of them actually conspire to separate an inventor from his invention, by knowing that he will need more money, and constructing the deal so the day he does, they can effectively take it away.

Sad to say the kinds of plonker they appoint to the board have the habit of killing of both the invention and entrepreneurial streak - so the companies become over capitalized well administrated flops. Take companies like aromascan.

[Mikl]

Bryanon,

I couldn't agree more with your excellent analysis. When I worked in journalism, the magazine I wrote for was constantly getting pitches for articles from freelance writers (actual or would-be). Most of these were perfectly straightforward, but, in some cases, the writer would insist on an assurance that, if the pitch was turned down, the magazine would not commission another writer to write about the same subject. Some even wanted a written undertaking to that effect.

I got so tired of trying to explain to people that, in journalism, ideas (for articles) are cheap. We receive dozens of them every week, and we internally generate many more of our own. Where the bottleneck lies is in competent people to research and write the articles in question. Where such competent people exist, they have plenty of ideas of their own. The idea of stealing other people's ideas was ludicrous.

I know this is not quite the same as pitching to investors, but there do seem to be some parallels.

Mike

[crabfoot]

The idea of stealing other people's ideas was ludicrous.

Some years ago there was a TV programme called something like "Don't Try This At Home". Somebody I know was featured on the program, leaping off a high building (a speciality of his).

An ex-army instructor, he'd been trying to break into the stunt business for years. So when the producers asked if he could come up with some other stunts for the programme, he was quite pleased to come up with a list of 8 other stunts that he could perform. He later asked if they wanted him to perform any of the stunts, but was fobbed off.

When the series aired, he was on the first show. On every subsequent show, one of his stunt ideas was performed by another person, and the production team stopped talking to him. Poor sod, he really thought he'd cracked the biz at last ...