By: Ronald L Docie, Sr., President, Docie Development, LLC
Many people think that invention submission type companies are the biggest sources for ripping off inventors. But these companies can’t even come close to taking money from inventors at a rate remotely near what inventors waste on patent attorneys to file erroneous, inappropriate, and ineffective patent applications.
Here’s how you get scammed. First you establish a profession of highly paid and powerful lawyers. Then you add a lobbying body like the APLA (American Patent Law Association) to do your gunning for you, both in Washington, and with PR. With this facade of seeming credibility, you publish material and build a case for telling the lowly independent inventors (I’m in this category, too) that the first thing you’d better do is patent your invention before doing anything else. Some go so far as to inappropriately tell the inventor that they are “protected” by the mere filing of a patent application.
Of course the justification for such advice is many fold. Filing a patent application, and thereby establishing your date of priority certainly may be critical; however, with most inventions being in rather small niche markets, this advantage is mostly outweighed by the inherent risk of losing any and all money you spend on patenting and developing your invention. Every inventor’s situation is different; one size doesn’t fit all. As such, should you patent BEFORE spending a little time and money doing some market research? The answer is, normally, and on average, NO.
The next concern of the cautious patent attorney is if you reveal your invention while doing ANY market research, you’ll probably lose any chance of receiving foreign patents. Although this may be true, consider these two facts:
1. There is a tremendous amount of market research that an inventor can do on their own, without ever revealing any of the trade secrets of their invention. Isn’t it interesting that patent attorneys, as sharp as they are, have never in the 200+ year history of US patents, figured out how an inventor might do some quick preliminary market research before applying for a patent? Since these patent attorneys as a whole, and as a profession, are inept when it comes to invention marketing and especially invention market research, I would humbly suggest that they leave this sort of thing up to marketers, and maybe even glean some advice from the marketing profession and work in concert to help inventors on a more holistic basis.
2. What if you never get a foreign patent? My experience is that foreign patents are not appropriate for over 95% of the hundreds of invention projects that I have personally worked on or been familiar with. This is because it normally requires an investment of well over $100,000 to go down the foreign patenting route. Plus, there are exorbitant costs to maintain those patents on an annual basis. Most inventions by individual inventors are never successful, or only a tiny portion ever get international distribution, and fewer will ever receive enough royalties or other income to justify the investment of foreign patenting.
So, how does an inventor pre-determine whether their invention project is even appropriate for foreign patenting? Well, this is where the market research comes in handy. And who’s going to do this? Not the patent attorney. You don’t hire a brain surgeon to repair your car. And you’ll find few patent attorneys referring their would-be clients to a marketing company, especially prior to any patent application.
Are you starting to see the vicious circle here? Patent attorneys have used every apparent credible resource and reason to capture the first dollar spent by inventors. Nearly every day an inventor tells me that they can’t spend any money on marketing because they blew their wad on patenting expenses, yes, even mortgaging the farm in some cases. The number of inventors who tell me this dwarfs the number that complain that the submission companies have just allegedly ripped them off.
You may ask, why would these unscrupulous attorneys, many of whom seem nice, want to rip off the poor independent inventor? The answer is simple. When cash flow is tight, do you send the inventor to a marketing research firm to tell the inventor that his “baby is ugly,” or do you take the first dollar, give him a vanity patent, and make tons more money in the process? Enter — the dark side.
Next thing you know, you’ve spent $5,000 to $10,000 for a patent that you will never need and you’ve wasted three or more years waiting for a response from the patent office.
In all fairness, I must say that irrespective of all the statements about attorneys I’ve made herewith, I use attorneys all the time, I recommend that my clients use attorneys, and I think everyone should use, at least to some extent, a patent attorney or agent to file their patent application; attorneys have saved my ass, helped my clients, and many are my personal friends. Not every attorney is unscrupulous, and many do recommend that inventors seek marketing and market research results before pursing a patent. You just need to do your research beforehand and know when it’s the right time to use an attorney’s services, and which of their services to use.
In the next few blogs, I will talk about what inventors can do to learn more about the pros and cons of patenting, and how to establish a patent strategy.
RON DOCIE’s career in the world of inventions spans more than three decades. His own inventions are found in Wal-Mart, Kmart, and thousands of other outlets. As an agent for inventors, Docie has negotiated over fifty licenses with such companies as General Motors. He is an expert consultant on idea submission to Johnson & Johnson and other prominent companies. Docie is the president of Docie Development, LLC, an international company that provides services for inventors and corporations, and he is author of The Inventor’s Bible: How to Market and License Your Brilliant Ideas, Third Edition, 2010, Ten Speed Press, a Crown Publishing imprint of Random House.
