Getting your gizmo a patent is hard work
Question: When mowing and edging my yard, I was getting grass all over my legs and shoes as well as nicks from rocks and debris. I didn’t want to wear long pants, so I looked for some type of leg protection. When I didn’t find anything, I designed something that seemed to work well. How do I go about putting this on the market?
Answer: Seeing unmet needs and solving real-world problems are good starters on the path to entrepreneurship. However, you have a lot of preliminary work to do before you’ll be ready to go to market with your invention.
Although you looked around already, you need to do a more comprehensive search before you can conclude that no one else has beat you to the punch on this design.
Look online and scour catalogs for similar products, and e-mail or visit retailers that might carry such an item. If you’re satisfied that you have a unique product or a major improvement on an existing one, start an “inventor’s journal” to prove that you were the first to come up with the product. This logbook documents your invention process, including sketches and lists of materials, said Alan Tratner, president of the nonprofit Inventors Workshop International (www.inventorsworkshop.org).
Sign and date the journal pages and have them witnessed. “This gives you a written chronology of the idea’s development,” Tratner said. To learn more about the putting together such a journal, go to inventors.about.com/od/logbook.
Next, conduct a preliminary search of previous patents through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov) and, if you want to sell overseas, international intellectual property protection databases. You can hire a patent attorney or a patent search firm, which will cost about $700, or you can search the patent database yourself. Nonprofit organizations such as Tratner’s group provide patent searches for about $300. Get a formal legal opinion about your product’s patentability based on the results of your search.
Assuming you can develop and own the rights to your product, you’ll have to decide whether you want to manufacture and sell it yourself or license it to an existing manufacturer. Talk to a business counselor at a group such as Service Corps of Retired Executives, or SCORE, (www.score.org) about this.
Either way, you would need to file a provisional patent application in the U.S. and possibly internationally, Tratner said. You should also protect your product’s trademark and copyright your design and operating instructions. The Patent Office provides information at www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip/index.htm.
A product development firm can help you with issues such as complying with federal and state product safety regulations, developing and testing a prototype and securing proper materials. Before you manufacture any product, however, you’ll need to conduct market research to determine whether consumers or landscapers would buy your product, whether they understand how it works, how effective they find it and how much they would pay for it.
It’s important to check out the legitimacy of any consultants you hire. There is cautionary advice well worth reading online about patent schemes. Start with this site: www.uspto.gov/smallbusiness/index.html.
The Los Angeles chapter of Inventors Workshop International co-sponsors a monthly seminar, “Cashing In on Great Ideas,” with the Los Angeles Central Library. You can find information on the Saturday afternoon lecture series at www.lapl.org/events/seminars.html.
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Got a question about running or starting a small enterprise? E-mail it to karen.e.klein@latimes.com or mail it to In Box, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.