PATENTING YOUR CONCEPT, PRODUCT OR PROCESS
You will need to look at the following websites listed below:
They give the specific patenting rules and regulations that are relevant to their region or country. You should read through the websites that are relevant to you, to get an understanding of how the process takes place in those countries. For example, if you are living in Germany and patent your invention at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) and want to do business with an American manufacturing company on American territory, the patent status that you received in Germany may not protect you in America. You can get clarification of this from your country’s Patenting Office or its website. If you plan to do business with American Companies, on American soil, then you should patent you invention at the U.S. Patenting Office. Each website explains in details the patenting application process and the cost for each service. Another issue is that many countries offer patenting services through their Ministry of Legal affairs, Department of Legal Affairs or relevant government departments responsible for this, but that patent status in the particular country may not offer protection outside of that country. For example, many Caribbean countries can grant an individual a patent or patent pending status, but this protection may not be legally binding outside that country. Again this can be clarified by the Patenting Office in the particular jurisdiction. If an individual is determined to do business in America or Canada, he should get the patenting status in those countries.
The Directory of Intellectual Property Offices website gives a listing of intellectual property offices in countries throughout the world. You can look for the specific intellectual property office in your country and check that website or visit their office for further information for your particular needs.
If you want to get patent pending status through the United States Patent and Trademark Office, you can complete the patent pending application forms and do the schematics on your own. Then use your credit card or send a cheque through the postal agency to make the payment and submit your application form with the schematics. You can do online submission on the website, although some people still send submissions through the postal agency. For a patent pending, you will get protection for your idea for one full year from the date of registration. After this year you will have to patent your idea or it will lapse and you will loose all rights to it. This one year will give you enough time to fully develop your idea into a prototype if you wish or develop it into 3-D graphics and animation or even make a video of the graphics and animation. Within recent times videos have become popular, since someone can quickly and easily see a product, how it works and the benefits of the uses, instead of opening a letter to read some bulky documents. As soon as you get a receipt and letter of acknowledgement from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, then you can approach companies with the prototype, 3-D graphics and animation or the video.
You can approach as many companies as you wish, that are relevant to your ideas. Simply contact them through their websites, through the postal service, with a phone call or send an e-mail. Your letters should be addressed to the Research and Development Department, Product Development Department and if you want to be bold, address it to the C.E.O. If you want to call, feel free to do so and explain your idea to the people in the Research and Development Department or Product Development Department. There have been many occasions in the past when someone had a great idea and submitted it to a company, but it was rejected by low level employees, because there was no communication between them and the Research and Development Department or the Product Development Department. There is a phenomenon that occurs in most companies throughout the world, called the communication gap. This happens when all the departments within a particular company are not in synchronization with each other, and one department is not aware what the other department is doing. I will illustrate this with an example. Let us say the Research and Development Department of a microchip company is working on a new microchip and the engineers are having severe problems and that company has a no submission policy from outsiders, but it so happens that a tech wizard has independently found the solution and has the schematics. Just by luck and chance, he calls the front desk and tells the receptionist or the C.E.O.’s secretary that he wants to make a submission. In the mind of the receptionist or secretary, they already know that their company has a no submission policy from outsiders. What happens next is left to the imagination. The employee politely tells the tech wizard that her company does not accept outside submissions. The company just lost a solution to a problem that their Research and Development Department was searching for. In essence the company lost billions of dollars that it could have easily made, but lost because low level employees did not use their initiative to call the Research and Development Department. If the tech wizard had made contact directly with the people in the Research and Development Department, someone there would have seen the value in his invention and invite him to visit the company. A smaller company on the other hand listens to what the tech wizard has to say, likes his submission and begins mass production within months and generates billions of dollars in revenue. This is what happens all the time and the large companies have no idea what they continue to lose. Initially Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak approached the big companies at that time and were rejected, but that did not stop them, until they eventually got an investor. Those big companies lost out on billions of dollars in revenue. The President of a large company who rejected their idea back then had publicly declared that there was no market and no use for a personal computer, but instead the world could only have and use six or seven computers. Guess what? His company lost out on the Personal Computer revolution and market and it took that company years before they came up with a Personal Computer of their own, but they were still left behind in the PC market.
In the above example, if the receptionist or secretary told you about their no submission policy, you should not be discouraged by this, because you can still send a letter to the Manager of Research and Development or to the Manager of Product Development.
Another strategy to use is the competitor’s edge. If one company rejects your idea, you can make the submission to its competitors and explain to the competitors how their companies will benefit as opposed to the other companies. Once you explain the many benefits of the submission to a company, there is a high chance that they will accept your submission. Remember the inventor of the monopoly board game was rejected many times before a company saw potential in his product. Remember also Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were rejected hundreds of times before they eventually got an investor. Persistence is the name of the game here. A person who is looking for a job sends out hundreds of resume before being called for one interview. The submission process for an invention is similar. You will need to contact hundreds of companies and send hundreds of copies of submissions before you get a positive e-mail or telephone call. As soon as a company accepts your idea, the journey now begins.
If you do not want to go through this process alone, you can contact Stephen Key and Andrew Krauss and they will walk you through the entire process, by advising you what to do and what to be careful of. They will even advise you on how to go through the various steps without you having to pay large sums of money to a patenting attorney. They will also advise you when it will be necessary for you to speak to an attorney, since most steps you can do by yourself without the help of an attorney. There are invention companies with links to major manufacturing companies and they will be able to help market your idea to these companies, of course for a fee. They maintain a database of people’s inventions that companies browse through regularly to look for new products that they can manufacture. You can enquire about the reputable companies from Stephen Key and Andrew Krauss.