Is your idea worth pursuing?
So, you have an idea for an invention, but you don’t know if you should spend the time and energy to make it a product. There are three things you can do to see that don’t take much time or money.
First, let’s look at if your invention would make a sell-able product. Here are a couple links that address that:
Once we know it’s sell-able, we need to find out if someone’s already come up with your idea and patented it. The Unites States Patent and Trademark Office has a website that lets you search existing patents for something similar to what you came up with here:
USPTO patent search page
Since doing a patent search isn’t easy, they’ve created a 38-minute tutorial which you can see here. (You’ll need the Adobe flash plugin for your browser)
If you don’t want to watch a 38 minute video, you can learn about their 7-step process here.
Is there a Market?
Once you know that you have something that no-one else does yet, we need to determine if it will sell. That takes market research. While that sounds scary, it’s just figuring out how many people realistically would want to buy your product. Just because there’s 350 million people in the US who have toes, doesn’t mean that they all would want to buy toe rings.
Realistically determining the market is super important because If the market isn’t what you thought, all the time and money spent developing your product would be wasted. Here are some articles on how to figure out what the market for your product is:
Protecting Your Idea
Producing a product from an invention idea is tricky. You have to tell someone about it or it will just stay an idea, but you don’t want to go blabbing about it because someone could steal the idea and produce it before you can. How do you protect your rights?
One way is to not talk about the invention directly, but address it by the problem it solves. For example, the Litter Defender is a dog-proof cat litter box that also reduces litter scatter. I told you what problems the invention solves (dogs in the litter box and litter scatter), but not how it works. This is good for most casual conversations.
When it comes to business conversations, more detail is needed. Someone creating a plastic mold for the Litter Defender isn’t going to be able to work with a vague description. They need a detailed drawing. That’s when we go with nondisclosure agreements and provisional patents. Here’s some information on those topics. Provisional patents are great because you can file one, and then have a year to develop the product before you need to file a non-provisional patent. That way if your product changes during development (mine did), your patent will be on the final version, while the provisional patent protects your rights during development.
While the provisional patents can be written up by anyone, the nonprovisional utility and design patents should be done by a lawyer as they need specific language that normal people don’t use. Don’t panic if you don’t have money for a patent lawyer, the USPTO has a program for free patent attorney work.
Patents need drawings of your invention. Unfortunately, your own drawings won't do, they have to meet specifications. Most patent attorneys will charge you ~$100 for a drawing as they aren't artists and have to spend their time lining up and communicating with someone to get the drawings. They will, however, allow you to get your drawings elsewhere. I've worked with this place and found them to be quick, efficient, and reasonably priced.
Other sources for information
There’s a lot of information on the web about inventions and getting inventions to market. Some of it’s reliable and some…not so much. Here’s some sites that have a lot of good information.
Funding
Bringing a product to market costs a lot of money (~$50,000 - $100,000). Where does that money come from? In most cases it comes from the inventor in the form of saving, friends and family investments, or loans.
Be careful when getting money from friends and family. Be sure to make everything legal and formal. Loans to a company from an individual MUST charge interest or it's not legal. If friends and family are investing, be sure to write up a contract that says exactly how much they are investing and what percent of the company they'll be getting in return. They also MUST be told that they may not get any of the money back if the business doesn't make it. Here's a page from Idea Pros that talks about how to go about asking friends and family for money: https://www.ideapros.com/blog/how-to-ask-for-money-to-fund-your-business-idea
Another option is loans. Because credit cards have high interest rates, many people look for business loans. Because banks frequently won't give out loans to people without sufficient collateral, people often resort to looking online for other funding options. Unfortunately, there are more scams promising you money than legitimate funding options. Here's an article telling you what to look for when searching for funding: www.fundera.com/blog/business-loan-scams
So, you have an idea for an invention, but you don’t know if you should spend the time and energy to make it a product. There are three things you can do to see that don’t take much time or money.
First, let’s look at if your invention would make a sell-able product. Here are a couple links that address that:
Once we know it’s sell-able, we need to find out if someone’s already come up with your idea and patented it. The Unites States Patent and Trademark Office has a website that lets you search existing patents for something similar to what you came up with here:
USPTO patent search page
Since doing a patent search isn’t easy, they’ve created a 38-minute tutorial which you can see here. (You’ll need the Adobe flash plugin for your browser)
If you don’t want to watch a 38 minute video, you can learn about their 7-step process here.
Is there a Market?
Once you know that you have something that no-one else does yet, we need to determine if it will sell. That takes market research. While that sounds scary, it’s just figuring out how many people realistically would want to buy your product. Just because there’s 350 million people in the US who have toes, doesn’t mean that they all would want to buy toe rings.
Realistically determining the market is super important because If the market isn’t what you thought, all the time and money spent developing your product would be wasted. Here are some articles on how to figure out what the market for your product is:
- Researching the Innovations Market
- Plausibly Estimating the Market for Your Invention
- Advice for inventors: How to get your product to market
- A Small Business Guide to DIY Marker Research
Protecting Your Idea
Producing a product from an invention idea is tricky. You have to tell someone about it or it will just stay an idea, but you don’t want to go blabbing about it because someone could steal the idea and produce it before you can. How do you protect your rights?
One way is to not talk about the invention directly, but address it by the problem it solves. For example, the Litter Defender is a dog-proof cat litter box that also reduces litter scatter. I told you what problems the invention solves (dogs in the litter box and litter scatter), but not how it works. This is good for most casual conversations.
When it comes to business conversations, more detail is needed. Someone creating a plastic mold for the Litter Defender isn’t going to be able to work with a vague description. They need a detailed drawing. That’s when we go with nondisclosure agreements and provisional patents. Here’s some information on those topics. Provisional patents are great because you can file one, and then have a year to develop the product before you need to file a non-provisional patent. That way if your product changes during development (mine did), your patent will be on the final version, while the provisional patent protects your rights during development.
While the provisional patents can be written up by anyone, the nonprovisional utility and design patents should be done by a lawyer as they need specific language that normal people don’t use. Don’t panic if you don’t have money for a patent lawyer, the USPTO has a program for free patent attorney work.
Patents need drawings of your invention. Unfortunately, your own drawings won't do, they have to meet specifications. Most patent attorneys will charge you ~$100 for a drawing as they aren't artists and have to spend their time lining up and communicating with someone to get the drawings. They will, however, allow you to get your drawings elsewhere. I've worked with this place and found them to be quick, efficient, and reasonably priced.
Other sources for information
There’s a lot of information on the web about inventions and getting inventions to market. Some of it’s reliable and some…not so much. Here’s some sites that have a lot of good information.
- InventRight YouTube channel -340 videos on market research, and developing, patenting and licensing your invention
- A wide range of free inventor information - http://www.freeinventorshelp.com/index.html
- USPTO resources page - https://www.uspto.gov/learning-resources
Funding
Bringing a product to market costs a lot of money (~$50,000 - $100,000). Where does that money come from? In most cases it comes from the inventor in the form of saving, friends and family investments, or loans.
Be careful when getting money from friends and family. Be sure to make everything legal and formal. Loans to a company from an individual MUST charge interest or it's not legal. If friends and family are investing, be sure to write up a contract that says exactly how much they are investing and what percent of the company they'll be getting in return. They also MUST be told that they may not get any of the money back if the business doesn't make it. Here's a page from Idea Pros that talks about how to go about asking friends and family for money: https://www.ideapros.com/blog/how-to-ask-for-money-to-fund-your-business-idea
Another option is loans. Because credit cards have high interest rates, many people look for business loans. Because banks frequently won't give out loans to people without sufficient collateral, people often resort to looking online for other funding options. Unfortunately, there are more scams promising you money than legitimate funding options. Here's an article telling you what to look for when searching for funding: www.fundera.com/blog/business-loan-scams