Patents

IMO no. Corporations have departments who will patent anything they can get away with, and you stand a good chance of finding your idea violates an existing patent.

Ignorance is underrated in this respect. They have the money and can afford the lawyers, best leave them to their games.

Cheers

It's expensive and a lot of hassle. I don't think it helps a resume much; there are too many silly patents around.

IMHO only when you see a serious chance to turn a profit. As for street credibility only real experience counts and that can best be shown by projects that actually made it to market in a big way. The best avenue to land a good job or interesting assignments are your peers, it's mostly word-of-mouth out there.

In my experience you will spend a lot of money finding out that it was already done.

I don't believe so. The problem is that even if you survive the ordeal process and expense of obtaining a patent, all you get is a license to sue an infringer. Do you have the time, money, and intestinal fortitude to spend the rest of your life in court? Can you successfully spend more on legal fees than a mega-corporation? Even if you persist, the odds are very much against you winning. Give up now while you're still sane and financially solvent.

I wonder what fraction of patents earn even their filing costs. 5%?

I also expect that lots of patents are infringed and nobody ever notices.

Right. Spend your time inventing new stuff and stay ahead of the competition.

Once you sell something, or maybe even offer it for sale, it can't be patented. So design it and sell it fast.

A patent can be a very valuable thing. I know of people who worked in areas that were close to the cutting edge and got patents on simple, not entirely un-obvious things that later we used by large companies. In the end they received big, big bucks on an ongoing basis. The kind of stuff that lets you retire at 40. In theory a patent has to not be "obvious", but that means things like using a screwdriver to open a paint can, not making a Philips blade so machines can automatically turn the screw. Many patents don't take a PhD to think up, but being first is what it is all about.

If you think your patent would stand up to scrutiny and would be useful to others, then you have to make the decision about filing for a patent. Even if your design is a tweak on an existing design, it can be useful and profitable.

I was under the impression that for the most part, big companies would rather spend ten million bucks grinding you to dust in the courts, than ever pay you ten thousand in royalties.

You don't have to fight alone. You can work with one of the many firms that go to bat for you for a share of the royalties. Google "mmp portfolio patents" It took a few years, but Charles Moore got a bunch of loot from this.

At one time, IBM made over $1B/yr from its patents. That was a significant chunk of its profits. ...and it's *all* profit. For large corporations, patents are also defensive. For everyone else, it's a good way to make patent mills rich.

Sure. No one cares if you infringe on a patent (with some exceptions) but Apple? Large corporations are very concerned about infringement and licensing.

A guy I knew had a really funny slant on patents. His scheme was to APPLY for a patent on something, anything, on a part in a particular product of theirs. Whenever it looked like the patent examiner was getting ready to GRANT the patent, he'd send a whole bunch of "clarifications" and amendments to the original application. The idea was to keep the "patent pending" label on the product for as long as possible. While the patent was pending, it was all secret, and competitors would fear the whole design of the instrument was the subject of the patent. One of their mainstay instruments was not patentable, as it was amply covered by prior art. Their instrument was really way better than the earlier units, but not in such a way it was likely to win a patent on the whole unit. His patent application was for a bracket that held a toroid inductor to the circuit board. But, as long as it was "pending", nobody could find that out!

Jon

Hah, that's a pretty good hustle.

I worked for a company in the 1980's that had a legal services staff that was burning about $500,000/year in salaries and expenses mostly suing patent infringers. I don't recall how much they collected but it was much much much less than they cost the company. Management finally did the math and fired the entire department. Good riddance as I used part of the now available space to built an RF screen room.

Can you afford the USPTO fees? Do you have enough time or money to research for background and conflicts? Ditto for properly writing the patent for submission for minimum or zero examiner objections? Legal answers to each objection takes time, expertise = = money to a patent lawyer. Then, after it is awarded, it aint worth spit until either the item is made and sold, and not even then.. If some bozo or company decides to muscle in, that paper is good in a court of law...as long as YOU can $pend more lawyer fees than that bozo

- could last 3-10 years or until empty pockets. The money in the pocket is the valuable paper during proceedings...

Look into obfuscation of the item/process and trade secret for protection. OR. Public Domain it. A _LOT_ less expensive.

Very true. Also patents that are virtual duplicates of others.

EXCELLENT advise!

Exactly! And those companies (mostly) do not realize that true cost to them, because the lawyers that they use, are on their employee list,so the costing is, to them, ZERO. Accounting shuffle games.

Big companies do the same thing. But they can afford the repetitive cost of generating the paperwork, and the repetitive USPTO fees.