If you obtain a patent, the world will have access your exact plans and can build the product. .... In some cases it's better to make the product without a patent, get in and saturate the market, then get out of the market and move on. There's roughly a two year life cycle.
The information in a patent application isn't made public until the patent is granted. That will take more than two years, so if you get in and out in two years there is little danger that a competitor will copy your invention based on the patent. There is a greater danger that they will reverse engineer your product and copy it that way. When the patent is granted you have the option of going after the competitor for patent infringement. As I said before, file a provisional application. This is fairly easy and inexpensive to do. This gives you a year to decide if you want to file for a patent. In the mean time you can see how well your invention performs in the market with the knowledge that you can file for a patent if it does well. If you don't file a provisional application, and you start shipping your product with the invention in it, you will lose the ability to file for international patents in the future.
Phil I am always doing engineering work and It seems that there is always a NDA. Why don't you sign them, whats the pros and cons of a NDA? I figured if I refused to sign the NDA I would never have work.
A typical NDA has a clause that says it does not apply to information already in the signer's possession before being disclosed under the NDA. Once you've been in business awhile, chances are pretty good that at least part of what's being disclosed is something you already know. If you subsequently use or reveal those parts, the onus is on you to prove that you were in possession of that knowledge before signing the NDA. That may not be easy if that foreknowledge wasn't documented. Consequently, I just don't sign them. Clients may complain, but I've never had one turn me down for work as a consequence.
Further to what Phil said, and to rebutt wjsteele, I have personal experience with GM. The only way they would even discuss my invention was if I had already patented it, OR if I firstly signed over all my right, title and interest in it to them for free. They absolutely would not enter into an NDA.
I guess I can understand why; they likely have very little to gain and more likely a lot to lose, with the latter at least a significant effort on their part.
Also, in a different case, I have been the victim of some patent trolls. They claimed against one of my clients (a multi billion dollar corporation) some preposterous rights. We went to court, and on a technicality it appeared that their likelyhood of success was doubtful. It cost my client about $100,000 to just deal with it, and ourselves about $2,000 in legal fees. Ours was so low because our client took the lead on the court procedings. The case was never concluded..... it just went away, so it's been in limbo now for a number of years.
We learned that the trolls had already collected some $18,000,000 by scaring others on the same issue because it was cheaper for the others to settle for $1,000,000 than to pursue it in court to conclusion. Quite an eye opener.
Back in 2010 I posted this here in the Parallax forum the Idea to convert a measurment to fractions of an inch on a digital caliper well now this feature has come out in many brands. I'm not saying that it was my invention but it is possible someone figured out what I was trying to do by the original questions I asked in 2007. Note in my 2010 post I didn't realiize that calipers with this feature were already avalible. All in all I'm glad I made the post if for no other reason to confirm to myself and others it was a good idea.
Further to what Phil said, and to rebutt wjsteele, I have personal experience with GM.
Interesting, we actually had our best success with GM. In fact, they bought one of our ideas outright and it is now a feature on several of their vehicles. Did we make a killing, no, but I certainly don't feel taken advantage of either.
Perhaps it was the way we approached them. We went through the (now gone) Delco Remy division in Anderson, IN and talked to their engineers first. That got us in the door and we worked our way up from there. It was actually a pleasant experience and at no time did we feel we were taken advantage of or intimidated.
Comments
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/23/why-u-s-patents-are-now-less-valuable/
C.W.
-Phil
Further to what Phil said, and to rebutt wjsteele, I have personal experience with GM. The only way they would even discuss my invention was if I had already patented it, OR if I firstly signed over all my right, title and interest in it to them for free. They absolutely would not enter into an NDA.
I guess I can understand why; they likely have very little to gain and more likely a lot to lose, with the latter at least a significant effort on their part.
Also, in a different case, I have been the victim of some patent trolls. They claimed against one of my clients (a multi billion dollar corporation) some preposterous rights. We went to court, and on a technicality it appeared that their likelyhood of success was doubtful. It cost my client about $100,000 to just deal with it, and ourselves about $2,000 in legal fees. Ours was so low because our client took the lead on the court procedings. The case was never concluded..... it just went away, so it's been in limbo now for a number of years.
We learned that the trolls had already collected some $18,000,000 by scaring others on the same issue because it was cheaper for the others to settle for $1,000,000 than to pursue it in court to conclusion. Quite an eye opener.
Cheers,
Peter (pjv)
Bean
Interesting, we actually had our best success with GM. In fact, they bought one of our ideas outright and it is now a feature on several of their vehicles. Did we make a killing, no, but I certainly don't feel taken advantage of either.
Perhaps it was the way we approached them. We went through the (now gone) Delco Remy division in Anderson, IN and talked to their engineers first. That got us in the door and we worked our way up from there. It was actually a pleasant experience and at no time did we feel we were taken advantage of or intimidated.
Bill