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When you have an idea
4

When you have an idea

When you have an idea

(OP)
When I was a kid, I though up some things that now others discovered later and now get to hang their names on.
It just makes me sick. How can you even prove something like that?  

RE: When you have an idea

Easy.  Invent a time machine.

I've invented many things that already exist.  I've also invented things that I've then read about the very next month in a technical journal.

- Steve

RE: When you have an idea

The other option is to get a patent, however as someone doing exactly that at the minute I would suggest that the idea of inventing a time machine is probably easier and cheaper.

RE: When you have an idea

If only I could say "Make it so". and it would be there...

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto:  KISS
Motivation:  Don't ask

RE: When you have an idea

It isn't enough simply to have an idea, you have to do something with it.

I invented a new type of vortex flowmeter.

I decided that patenting was an expensive way to give the idea away because the cost of defending the patents would be prohibitive. A patent is only as good as your ability to spend money defending it.

Instead I used confidentiality agreements to discuss with prospective manufacturers e.g. the company I worked for at the time (protected by the 1977 patents act).

It seemed to me to fit with their core skills, and other companies were busy investing in other conventional vortex meters, but after the presentation, the engineering team tasked to review it decided it was a non starter.

A year or so after I left the company (some few years down the line) the chief engineer had the grace to send me a copy of a new patent by a US university that duplicated my ideas and to apologise. So that idea is out there now with some University teams names all over it. Actually, I made a better job of it in terms of concept and designs for implementation, but so what?
 
There often comes  time when an invention is inevitable.
If there is a need, then as enabling technology emerges, chances are a bunch of people will have the same idea at more or less the same time.
The winner is then the one who gets to market first.

About all you can do is congratulate yourself on being smart enough to spot it but that's about it. For the one guy that patents it there may be just one other guy, you, who also thought of it, or there may be an army of people all saying "Hey, I thought of that. If only....."
 
If you had the idea and went no-where with it, too bad.
You also get small credit for being smart enough to think of it but not clever enough to do anything with it.

I am still sitting on a new domestic water meter design (if any one is interested).
Much better than the existing mechanical meters but the big names in the industry were reluctant to invest in a new technology when they had a comfortable share of the market.... and didn't invent it themselves.... I went round a couple of major water meter companies with that and the same deal.

It isn't just the "not invented here" syndrome but also economics. Why invest good money to make your original product obsolete if it doesn't actually generate a bigger market share.... it was as much about not upsetting the status quo as anything.

The trouble is there are not enough smaller hungrier companies still big enough to afford the investment and get away with it without being bought up and closed down.

Those of you who like coriolis meters may remember the Exac which was arguably lots better than the MicroMotion at the time. After a patent fight that ran to many millions of dollars, the Exac died when Rosemount bought out Fisher and shut down manufacture.
It didn't matter that the Exac was considered by many to be the better meter.
There are many meter technologies that never made it into the market for various reasons. Not because they didn't work but for other commercial reasons.

I;d like to think I could have invented the mass meter while washing the car, for example, a perfectly reasonable scenario. But if I did, I might still not have beaten MicroMotion to the market. There is more to it than the right idea.

All of which gets you nowhere if you had the idea and didn't get anywhere with it. But what can we say? Except too bad.  

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

RE: When you have an idea

dicer,

   I am trying to learn carpentry here at home.

   I designed a wall cabinet for my bathroom.  Rather than screw it straight to the wall, I decided to screw a wedge to the wall, and build a mating wedge into the cabinet.  As I completed the project, I had second thoughts about all this, and I searched the internet to see how other people mount cabinets.

   I turns out I have re-invented the French cleat.  French cleats are a standard way for mounting stuff to walls.  It is a rather obvious solution if you think about it.  It is mindbogglingly unlikely that I am the second person to figure this out.

               JHG

RE: When you have an idea

Sure, just about every whiteboard in our building mounted on hard walls uses something similar.  They're basically a strip of metal bent out and up from wall at about a 10° angle.  The identical mate, but upside down is mounted on the white board.

So not only has someone else thought about it, they've come up with a variety of variations.

Inventions are sometimes easy, but capitalizing on them is a wholly different matter.  Timing is everything.  To wit, Julius Edgar Lilienfeld patented the field effect transistor in 1925, but the semiconductor technology was pretty rudimentary, and so patent lapsed, either through complete neglect by the inventor, or because he realized that the devices were too far ahead of their time.

Similarly, we had a secretary who came up with idea for a car navigation system with a map display in 1983, at which time, the 386 had barely come out, and the largest removable media was the CD, and it was not even remotely capable of storing all the map information.  Had she patented her idea, she still would probably have gotten zero in the way of royalties, since actual devices that came out would have been substantial improvements to her "prior art" anyway.

The converse on timing is, of course, the Darth Vader of inventions, Jerome Lemuelson.  Starting with a mysteriously continued patent from the late 50's, he parlayed that sequence well into the 1980s to usurp the actual inventors of the VCR, bar code reader, and a host of other inventions.  His foundation, by suing anyone with deep pockets, aggregated millions of dollars in royalties that should have gone to the actual inventors, who were left with nothing but a footnote in history.

There is also Robert Kearns, the inventor of the ubiquitous delay-timed windshield wiper, who got rooked, even with NDAs and a patent.

TTFN

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RE: When you have an idea

If you have an idea but can't afford to patent it, publish it so putting it in the public domain.  At least that stops anyone else patenting it, or if they do they end up with a worthless patent.

RE: When you have an idea

Possibly.  The PTO is not always that up-to-date on publications...  I've seen patents that were clearly invalid, but survived up to 15 yrs after award, since no one challenged them.

TTFN

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RE: When you have an idea

Some people are good at inventing, others are good at taking credit for those ideas. yinyang

peace
Fe

RE: When you have an idea

Quote:

I've seen patents that were clearly invalid, but survived up to 15 yrs after award

But did anyone take any notice of them.  We tend to ignore them and if we get a Patent Agents letter just send back proof of prior art.

RE: When you have an idea

It depends on how vigorously the victim, er, defendant, chooses to fight the claim for royalties, as well as how well-equipped the defendant's literature resources are.  This was back in the hoary days before Google Scholar, etc., and it wasn't that easy to know what literature was available.  Being the packrat that I was, er, am, I had textbooks I could refer to, whereas others under similar circumstances might not have had.

At the time, we were been sued to $50M, so we had plenty of incentive to work at beating down the final sum, which wound up at $7M.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a slice of a well-deserved 10% finder's fee...cry

TTFN

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RE: When you have an idea

2
Wish I would have come up with the idea of the pet rock.

RE: When you have an idea

mauricestoker,

   I took art in high school.  My teacher had a pet rock, back before this became popular.  He even filmed a little documentary on it.

   One could argue that the real innovation was packaging, marketing and selling the pet rocks.  My art teacher did not think of this.

   Do you think I could get away with marketing an Ontario cleat?

               JHG

RE: When you have an idea

Quote:

It is a rather obvious solution if you think about it.

And thus not likely patentable.

Marketable is different.  However, since anyone with a table saw, or even a hand circular saw could make one in seconds...

RE: When you have an idea

My oldest son came up with the idea of a pet made out of a hose. He decided to take it to school to show the idea off, but unfortunately he came up with the name, Mr. Bobbit. The teacher sent him home with a note that the name was better than his idea for Smucker's fudge, but still not acceptable. I guess marketing is everything.

RE: When you have an idea

More than once I've had an idea, done little about it and then seen it in a magazine or on a TV commercial.

I remember something about mailing copies of your idea to yourself so that you could have a sealed, date stamped copy if later required.  I suppose Notary stamp may be similar but don't know the details - or if it would even be worth anything.

Posting guidelines FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm? (probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: When you have an idea

KENAT

The strategy about mailing yourself something is really more for copyright that intellucaul property (and even then, the US Copyright Office does not consider it valid).  For something to be prior art, it must be publicly available (such as a patent, or journal article).

Believe me, if you're lucky enough to not deal with patents, you should be happy.  And most patent holders don't make a dime of it anyways (perhaps a small bonus) because their patent is assigned to their employer.

    

RE: When you have an idea

"it must be publicly available "

No, that invalidates the patent, since it's assumed that publication means that you've waived ownership rights to the idea.  This was the approach we used to invalidate a a bunch of patents in a patent suit.  We proved that many of the patents were sufficiently described in the literature or textbooks prior to the patent priority date.

In the case of the invention of the laser, it took Gordon Gould 20+ years to get the Bell Labs laser patent overturned in his favor, mainly through the fact that he had copious and continuous documentation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#Laser

TTFN

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RE: When you have an idea

IRStuff,

I think you've misunderstood my point, we are in fact in agreement.  I was referring to the idea of mailing yourself documentation on your ideas so that you could *in theory* demonstrate prior art if someone tried to patent something you had previously thought of.

This doesn't work however, since in order for the documentation to invalid the patent, the information must be available publicly before the patent was filed for.

The only thing that dated documentation like that can do for you is to help establish an earlier invention date if you do go on to file a patent, which can be used to claim priority over other filed applications.



 

RE: When you have an idea

If it's that important, then notarizing it would be better.  There's absolutely no proof that what you mailed is what you currently have.  A notary ledger is a legal record of a document, witnessed by a legally sanctioned public official.

TTFN

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RE: When you have an idea

So, say you come up with a great idea, but for whatever don't want to patent it.  Could you, post it say on a fairly obscure website - for example an attachment to a post in one of the quieter Eng Tips forums.

If someone later comes to patent it could you claim prior art based on that post?

Posting guidelines FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm? (probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: When you have an idea

I thought the US (which will allow you to patent pretty much anything and where patent lawyers are usually in for a percentage, as going to do something to make it easier for inventors to protect their ideas without having to commit to the whole patent deal until they were ready.
Anyone know anything about that?

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

RE: When you have an idea

Kenat,

I wouldn't think so.  My point was that any "public" disclosure invalidated your ability to patent; at least, that's the way it used to be.

TTFN

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RE: When you have an idea

That is my point.

I'm not talking about coming back wanting to patent the idea.  I'm saying if someone else patents the idea after you've posted, and then a few years later you actually want to use it, if you can show it was already 'public', albeit in a fairly obscure source then you don't have to worry about their patent.

I'm clearly doing a crap job of explaining my self here.  Basically when you come up with the idea for some reason you don't want to patent it there an then.  However, you'd like to be able to still use it if things change in a few years time and maybe you have the resources to commercialize it or something.  I'm questioning if you could protect your ability to do this by having published the idea in an obscure place that no one else interested is likely to find it.

Posting guidelines FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm? (probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: When you have an idea

The basic point is that you have to have money to protect a patent or to challenge a patent.
So long as patents are seen as purely personal instruments then we will remain in the situation that big rich companies can be fairly cavalier with patent law and private individuals are going to get ripped off more often than not.

It might be a better idea if the patent office were obliged to protect the patents it awards and to treat any patents issued as being in the interests of the country or origination.
No one has deeper pockets than government organisations so in a p****ing contest many of the "so sue me" breaches would tend to fade away.
Of course, by the same token there might be expected to be a more rigorous review of applications.

The point here is that when some one breaks the law, the victim doesn't have to take the offender to court, the government does. The same ought to apply to patent infringements.

Like most such laws they are fairly long in the tooth and over the years have come to be little more than a little out of touch with reality.

I'd like to see the laws reviewed with the idea that it should be easier and a damn cite cheaper to obtain and maintain a reasonable patent. There might perhaps be some link between the fees and the revenues generated by the idea.

One reason why pharmaceuticals are so expensive is that they necessarily must patent the new drug as soon as possible but then a substantial proportion of the patent life is consumed in trials. This means that the drugs then have to recover the R&D costs and the costs of clinical trials over a shorter period. Perhaps we ought to see patent life extending from the date of first manufacture in some cases, if not all.

There is a great deal that ought to be looked at and reviewed.

Incidentally, one of the reasons why the UK shows such a high level of intellectual property and innovation is because the UK patent laws were seen as much more favourable to inventors. So much so that many inventors actually came to the UK not just to patent their ideas but also to manufacture.
This ought to be reason enough for an ambitious country to strengthen its laws and create some incentives.
 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

RE: When you have an idea

Many interesting ideas there, jmw.  Star from me.

RE: When you have an idea

I'm going to go completely against the grain here: IP (e.g. patents) is bunk. If you don't want people to copy you, don't provide the means (i.e. don't tell anyone). Trying to stir the pot here and it seems no one had yet gone this direction yinyang

RE: When you have an idea

While it's true that if you tell no one and build nothing, then no one can steal anything from you.  But, if someone else then produces your invention, without a patent you are without any paddle at all.  If you produce something, you don't have to tell anyone anything, but when your competitors buy your product and reverse engineer it, again, without a patent you are without any paddle at all.  

So why would that be a good approach?

TTFN

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RE: When you have an idea

Who is the person evaluating "good"? The inventor (pattern creator), the manufacturer (producer--possibly the same as the former), the user (consumer) or perhaps it is some utilitarian third party? I think it's obvious why answering this is important before anything can really be discussed.

I mean no disrespect by posing this line of thinking; I find it interesting to think about so I wanted to spur the conversation a little. blllttt

RE: When you have an idea

Trade secrets are a common and very well recognized alternative to patents. In some cases it is definitely preferable to a patent. Where the invention can be easily reverse engineered, it does not work.

But getting back to the original post where someone has an idea as a kid and now the invention exists with someone else getting the credit, my reaction is: so what? You are not an inventor. You did not reduce your idea to practice, so it was of no value. Everyone has ideas. There is little difference between an idea and a hallucination unless it results in something useful. I happen to think that anti-gravity would be very useful.

RE: When you have an idea


"I happen to think that anti-gravity would be very useful."

Me too. We should get together for a dinner parry thumbsup2

peace
Fe

RE: When you have an idea

IRStuff: I was but people often argue for the utility of others..anyhow as it is off-topic I'll hold my tongue further. Maybe it's a pub topic?

Cheers

RE: When you have an idea

My dad used to tell us that when he interviewed for a job with a manufacturer of adhesive bandages before WW2, he commented that the square ends that bandages had would catch and cause the bandage to peel off. He said that he took scissors and rounded the ends before putting them on. A few years later, the company started producing their bandages with rounded ends.

Simple observations and comments can make the difference to someone.
 

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

RE: When you have an idea

(OP)
Company trade secrets? How are they protected?
Can you copyright an idea, no matter what it is?

RE: When you have an idea

I agree with Bipolar. I thought of a lot of things when I was younger, too, but after getting smacked on the side of the head a few times I learned to keep those things to myself. Surprisingly, Larry Flynt and Bob Guccione must have read my mind and stolen my ideas.

RE: When you have an idea

The formula for Coca-Cola is an example of a trade secret.

RE: When you have an idea

I have found that ideas have a way of travelling, and your best protection against losing a new idea is to publish a patent preliminary disclosure, which is not expensive. Follow up later with the formal patent disclosure if it proves worthwhile to the company.

RE: When you have an idea

Has anyone here seen the movie Flash of Genious? I give it two thumbs up. Story of the fellow who invented intermitten windshield wiper. --------Phil

RE: When you have an idea

The Colonel's 11 herbs and spices are likewise a trade secret.

Supposedly, Claude Shannon, the putative father of signal processing claimed that every problem had its "time" for a solution, e.g., Einstein wasted the remainder of his life chasing unified field theory, because it was too early to attempt a solution.

A classic example is the junction field effect transistor (JFET), invented, and patented, by Julius Lilienfeld around 1930.  Unfortunately for him, it was nearly two decades later before anyone could even make one, because semiconductor technology was nearly nonexistent prior to end of the 1940s.  So, patent worth not much, because it was ahead of its time.

We even had a secretary who proposed a car navigation system in 1983, but she was, unfortunately, about 8 years too early, and she was unaware of all the technological advances that were leading up to the development of the first automotive GPS systems in the late 1980s.  At the time she proposed her system, we were just able to get 286s, which required 287s to even do math.  Hardly an auspicious solution to cranking GPS solutions on the fly...

So, sure, invent away, but timing, as they say, is EVERYTHING...

TTFN

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RE: When you have an idea

My university had a partnership with Black & Decker when I went there - B&D engineers/marketing would review improvements that students suggested to their products. One of our design projects was to find an improvement to their 24V cordless DeWalt circular saw (no longer manufactured). One of the groups of students (the semester before me) came up with a laser guide. They made a prototype and did demonstrations. The guys from Black & Decker absolutely tore them apart during their presentation - a horrible idea, they said.

Fastforward to today and look at the world of circular saws - every other one has a laser guide. I suppose that DeWalt has been steadfast in their opposition, though. The DeWalt models don't.

Even though you might have a great idea, if you can't convince someone with funds to get on-board with you, you're done.

RE: When you have an idea

I tried to sell my idea of auto-rerouting around traffic GPS to the Big 3 US car companies around 1999.  When I saw it finally in action I just laughed and wished I tried sending my idea to Pioneer or Alpine.  But I was a newbie of 18 years old at the time.

I have come up with some current stuff that doesn't exist and people are surprised they don't exist.  But I need help and help is hard to find for free.  Most people have no ambition in life to make their dreams come true.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil and Structural Engineering
http://bwengr.com

RE: When you have an idea

Circa 1918 my Dad worked for a patent attorney making patent drawings.

He claimed mailing yourself prior art documented by two people signing and acknowledging that they understand the concept of the invention was legal in coput for establidhing priority of conception.

Also he said that you must show continuous work up until marketing for the prioity to be valid.  In other words, you can't just document an idea and sit on it.

However, a few years ago I talked to a patent attorney on the phone and he claimed that the mailing thing is no longer valid.  Maybe he just wanted some busines?

To chime in with others, patent or none -- you have to have the funds to defend or challenge a patent.

In any event, the truth is in a book entiltled, "Inventing for Dummies" by Dr. Pamela Bird.  Her husband, Dr. Forrest Bird, wrote the introduction to the book.  Dr. Bird invented a respirator(s) used in hospitals, clinics, and ambulances around the world.  Dr Forrest Bird has been rcognized by more than one president for his life saving devices.  He learned the hard way how to go through the complete process from concept to marketing and has a company called percussionair that produces his respirators.

Pamela manages the "Bird Aviation and Invention Center" located in Sagle, North Idaho.

RE: When you have an idea

Here's an amusing read:  "the Case Against Patents".  I particularly love his opening paragraph:

http://www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf

Getting a patent is the easy part.  Defending it isn't.  And in the civil courts, the justice you get depends on how deep your own pockets are, relative to those of the guy you're taking on.

Then there are the parts of the world where even the notion of intellectual property is foreign...

RE: When you have an idea

Well, Don Lancaster was a well-respected engineer and columnist, but he obviously never interacted with the Lemuelson Foundation.  Ostensibly, Jerome Lemuelson was an innocent inventor, minding his own business and inventions, and yet, somehow, he managed to claim precedence on quite a few key patents against the actual inventors.  The VCR and barcode reader are two examples.

He then immediately proceeded to found his foundation, whose sole purpose was to use those patents to gouge companies with deep pockets and to promote the Lemuelson Foundation as a benefactor of future inventors.  Hundreds of millions of dollars successfully extracted from a number of companies, so yeah, you can make money off patents...

Lemuelson passed away circa 1990, but his patents and foundation gouge on...

TTFN

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Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

RE: When you have an idea

Yes, and there are plenty(?) of examples of people who have managed to get rich of their patented inventions. They still get ripped off, but they do still also make some money. Unfortunately, these may not be American inventors.... and a few a British.... but in some companies patents are taken seriously....
On the other hand, those success stories are pretty much on a par with lottery winners... a lot of winnings for a very very small proportion of inventors....

On the subject of inventors, those ghastly TV shows demonstrate the range of ill thought out  valueless ideas some people have and believe in.

Incidentally, I'm not altogether convinced by the idea you should go public with your ideas.... it is far more likely that with the way the patent system is, and its pretty much like most company investment schemes, there are probably a vast number of valuable ideas that the inventors never ever bother to share.... simply because it is not worth the effort... the original concept of the patent is a good one and well meant but if ever the reality fell further from the intention, I am hard put to know what it is.
If any country values ideas then now is the time to do something about it.  
 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

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