I started down that road with a patent a few years ago. 2 days into the process I decided that I was wasting time and money and putting my idea at risk. The input I got from the patent site was very generic and not terribly useful (they clearly were not listening, they had obviously heard from every inventor that his widget was unique in all the history of the world, and weren't seeing my little gadget as all that compelling).
I went to a patent attorney and I've spent a bunch of money with him (hired a professional patent search firm to look for competing projects, had him write a couple of licensing contracts, etc.) and have not regretted it for a second. The search firm found 50 patents that we had to explain why my gadget wasn't infringing on their patent (I had only found 6 in my search). End result is that my patent (which is up for final review this summer) has an excellent chance of being approved, and with the online firm I never had that confidence. One of the contracts was executed with a manufacturer with minimal revisions (I entered the negotiations from a position of relative strength by proposing the first draft in a form that was actually very fair to both parties). I got way better licensing terms than I had any right to expect while the patent was pending (proceeds from that contract have more than paid back the money I spent with the attorney).
My advice as someone who has been all the way through the process once, and 80% through it (so far) a second time would be to make a realistic business plan for the device and if you think that it will return more in the first year than you think you will spend with a patent attorney then go the attorney route. If you don't think you can reasonably expect to sell that many of your gadget then find a way to give the idea away in a manner that serves as advertising. I have a half dozen of these useful-but-not-necessarily-commercial ideas embedded in the files on my web page. People see high quality ideas that address their specific issues being given away for free and they seem to be more prone to hire me. It has been pretty effective along with my eng-tips.com signature that gives people an easy route to my web page.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
