Club Has Its Share of Mothers and Fathers of Inventions : Workshop: Members trade information about protecting intellectual property and cashing in on their brainstorms.
Ah, the power of an idea. The light bulb, the lightning rod, the airplane--creations of such pioneers as Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin and the Wright Brothers--are what made America great.
Just ask the folks at the Inventors Workshop International-Ventura County chapter. The inventors of such contraptions as the Skiparoo, the Erase A Face doll, the Foldable Squeegee and the manual jaw opener will tell you that since the days of the Founding Fathers, inventors and their ideas have been the driving force behind the U.S. economy.
IWI chapter President Bob Sperry will even argue that Japan has overtaken the United States as the dominant world economic power because inventors are taken more seriously in the Far East these days than they are here.
“What’s happening lately is that U.S. companies don’t pay for research unless there’s a guaranteed return for their investment, so people are selling their ideas to the Japanese,” Sperry said recently. “That’s why Japan is sky-high while the U.S. is going to pot.”
Sperry, 63, and his fellow IWI inventors meet twice a month at Ventura City Hall to philosophize about the inventor’s role in American history and why the U.S. Constitution protects and encourages scientific developments.
But that’s just the small talk. Then they get down to the business of sharing information about the patent system, how to market their products, how to protect intellectual property, and how to cash in on a good idea.
For there’s nothing wrong with making a fortune, Sperry says.
“Quite the contrary,” he says, “it’s the American way.”
The IWI-Ventura chapter, part of the Camarillo-based national organization, has been going strong for more than 20 years. On a recent Tuesday, a meeting was called to discuss the chapter members’ latest ideas and to exchange tips on the best way to make them sell.
The group has more than 50 members, but Sperry says only a few attend meetings. On this day, less than two dozen people showed up--including inventors, business managers, spouses and friends.
“We have a problem with our group,” said Sperry of its attendance. “Most people come here with an idea and the desire to do something about it, but after they find out everything they need, they get so busy with their inventions that they stop coming. Then a new starry-eyed inventor walks in with an idea, and we have to start all over again.”
It’s easy to spot Sperry in a room full of Ventura inventors. He is the only one who looks the part, with his worn blue suit, white turtleneck, white canvas sneakers and a young Albert Einstein hairdo. The others are clean-cut, conservatively dressed and without a hint of eccentricity.
Notwithstanding his appearance, Sperry, a second-generation patent attorney, said he became an inventor less than three years ago. Like so many others before him, Sperry said, he stumbled on a problem and decided to do something about it.
“I was in Jerusalem filming Christ’s Sepulcher and there was a jackhammer noise in the background, which does not produce a religious atmosphere,” he said.
That’s when he decided to invent a sound-editing device for home video cameras. “I didn’t set out to be an inventor,” he said. “It just hit me.”
Sperry said his business partners are developing a working model, or prototype, and hope to market the device soon.
Sperry’s colleagues told similar tales about their own creations. In their presentations, they said that while most inventors share the hope of getting rich and contributing to mankind, the forces that inspire them are as diverse as their innovations.
For soft-spoken Tony Lopez, becoming an inventor was a rather tormented process. Pain inspired his idea--it hit him while he sat on a dentist’s chair, waiting for his teeth to get drilled.
Lopez figured that the anxiety of visiting a dentist can be alleviated to a degree if patients are allowed to participate somehow in the process of having their teeth fixed.
After talking to several dentists, Lopez came up with a plastic jaw opener--a light, highly squeezable tool that patients can use to keep their mouths open while the dentist works on it.
Said Lopez: “I was sitting there in the dentist’s office staring at the skylight, and I just thought that my mandibular area was getting real tired, so I said, ‘Gosh, there must be a way to keep the mouth open while the doctor does his work.’ ”
Lopez said the first prototype was made out of a twisted coat hanger. The new plastic version, he said, can be marketed for as low as 29 cents apiece.
Sitting next to Lopez was Mark Sebastian, who came up with his idea during a shower. He realized that the best way to clean a glass shower door was with a squeegee. The problem with squeegees, he said to himself, is that they are ugly and difficult to store.
“Squeegees belong in a garage,” Sebastian told his fellow inventors, who nodded in agreement.
So together with co-inventor James Noggle, a former colleague at an Oxnard real estate firm, Sebastian came up with the concept of the foldable squeegee.
Their squeegee fits nicely into a small, cylinder-shaped, round-edged plastic case that comes in different colors. “It’s easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and you can hang it on your shower handle,” Sebastian said. The price of the finished product will be $9.95 to $19.95, depending on the prototype the inventors choose.
Other inventions now being discussed at IWI meetings include the Erase A Face Doll, a cute rag doll with a blank face on which children can draw.
The inventor, Ross Cearfox of Camarillo, knows firsthand that a good idea can go a long way. Now retired, he said he was one of the original five Xerox Co. salesmen, long before that company became a business giant.
With Erase A Face, Cearfox is convinced that he’s got another winner.
Then there’s the Circle Cutting Compass Clamp, a simple compass-like device that can be attached to a welder’s torch and allows welders to cut circular holes on pipes and steel plates without having to use a heavy and expensive electric-powered hole saw.
Alfredo Castro Jr., the tool’s inventor, said he was working one morning, drilling holes into pipes for the Central Coast Fire Protection Co., when he got the idea.
The tool is on sale for $35.
Roxanne Beeler’s invention was inspired by another person’s fear of AIDS. Beeler said she came up with Safe Search after talking to a policeman friend who told of his fear of catching AIDS during car searches.
He told her that it’s not uncommon for officers to be stung by razor blades, shards of glass or even AIDS-infected needles while searching car seats. Beeler then came up with Safe Search--a hollow plastic, tong-like object that can reach deep between cushions even better than plastic gloves.
So committed is Beeler to her crime-fighting invention that she convinced her husband, Gary, who owns a farm equipment store in Oxnard, to make a heavy investment on molding machines to mass-produce Safe Search.
“We’re talking big bucks,” Gary Beeler said, sounding apprehensive. After his wife glared at him, he quickly added: “But nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Of all the current IWI-Ventura inventors, none has ventured less and gained more than Mike Kapala, founder of the fledging TLC Toy Co. Kapala didn’t invent anything, but he resurrected an old toy he now calls Skiparoo, which consists of a plastic ball connected by a yardlong cord to the player’s ankle.
With one foot, Kapala makes the ball spin around, while he skips over the rope connected to the ball.
“My contribution was coming up with a material that is both durable and won’t dent the furniture,” said Kapala, while skipping over his Skiparoo in a City Hall corridor.
Kapala said he’d like to invent something original (“I think about it every day”) but for the moment is more than satisfied with the acceptance his Skiparoo is gaining.
So far, toy stores in Canada and the United States have ordered more than 200,000 in less than two years, Kapala said. Moreover, he said, it’s easier to get a bank loan to market a product that has already been invented than to sell an idea never tested before.
After all the inventors and would-be inventors had shared their discoveries, Sperry reminded everyone to keep coming and adjourned the meeting. In closing, he offered a final word of advice along with a friendly jab at the organization’s Pasadena chapter:
“I want to remind everyone that our emphasis will continue to be on serious, legitimate inventions--not that toilet seat stuff they do in Pasadena.” Everybody appeared to understand.
