I've Got This Great Invention.....

People sometimes come to me with their inventions, wanting to know how to take out a patent. The answer is far from simple, but here are a few pointers. Note, however, that I am an inventor with a number of patents to my name, NOT a qualified patent attorney. My comments on the subject are practical, not professional patent advice. 

First of all, do some research: It's quite unusual to come up with an idea that someone hasn't thought of before. Just because it's not for sale in the shops doesn't mean it hasn't been invented or talked about. And if the idea has been published anywhere then its "in the public domain" and no one can patent it. That doesn't, of course, mean that you can't make it. It just means that you can't stop anyone else from making it. It's a free-for-all.

  
So get online and search. The British patent office has a very good free search engine, www.espace.net  which, while not exhaustive of all the patents in the world, is a very good starting point. And good old Google will, if you are careful with your search terms, often tell you whether your idea is new. Remember that other people may call the same idea by different names (your "engine" may be someone else's "motor", or even "prime mover"). other sites that might help are www.trevorbaylisbrands.com and www.freepatentsonline.com.
And while you are doing this, keep the idea to yourself. "In the public domain" doesn't just mean on someone's website or in a magazine, it means telling anyone without some sort of agreement (written) that you are disclosing it in confidence. So keep it under your hat until you have decided if it really is novel. Even if it is novel, it may not be patentable. To qualify for a patent, an idea requires an "inventive step, not obvious to one practised in the art". For an explanation of what this means, I suggest you visit the uk patent site www.ipo.gov.uk.  
  Finally, patents are expensive. It's easy to read the scale of charges from the uk patent office and to work out that, if you write it yourself, the total cost is a few hundred pounds, plus the renewal fees every year. But there are two things to realise about this. Firstly, such a patent only gives you protection in the uk. People can still copy your idea as long as they manufacture it in another country. To protect your idea worldwide is very expensive.

Secondly, unless you really, really know what you are doing, a patent written without the expensive assistance of a patent agent is likely to be worthless. Legal speak applies to patents as much as any other legal document, and competitors will simply find a way around your amateur patent. So to have a patent thats really defendable really means using a patent agent. Which takes your costs up from hundreds to thousands of pounds. Sorry, but that's how it works.

So do you actually need a patent? Many ideas have been successfully exploited without patent protection. Remember that a patent is there to dissuade other people from copying your idea and competing against you.

But, if you make a good job of your product, and offer it at the right price, you create what is called a barrier to entry. Someone else has got to do all the same work as you, in order to enter a market that you are already in. Unless your product is too expensive, or not very good, or you can't make enough of it to satisfy the demand, then there's little incentive to compete with you. So you have to weigh up the possible protection from a patent against the not inconsiderable cost. Tricky...

There's a long discussion in the middle of my new novel, "Kicking the Tyres" about exactly this problem, with the added, real-life pressure of time to market. The debate is between the entrepeneur, Zac Zender and his wife, Madeleine, who's a lawyer. I'm not going to reproduce it here as it would kind of give the game away but if you want a good read about a revolutionary, partially patented race-car engine and it's nutty inventor, you might like to click here.

If you've got a question about all this, or would like to discuss your invention (without disclosing it of course) please feel free to email me mike@michaeljdixon.co.uk, with inventions on the subject line of your email. I will attempt to answer your query or to point you in the right direction.

 
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