Patent?

[Beanmetalworks]

Hi i have been working on a piece of farm machinery to build and market im just wanting to no before i go out there and sell sell sell is it wise to patent this product???? if so how difficult is and if not y not????

 

[Shox Dr]

I was once told a patent is only as good as the money you can afford defending it.

I'd just make it and sell it.

Good luck

 

[Beanmetalworks]

Yeah get what u mean i just fell like soon as i show some dealerships they might think hmm ill get that made by so and so for less money?? but spose you get that any were??

 

[Shox Dr]

I was also told once a patent is pending no one can touch it. But once the patent has been issued that is when the trouble starts as they now know the spec's so can figure a way around them.

 

[KemppiFrog]

Oh dear. Not cheap to do, and very difficult to defend.
Fergusson sued Ford over the 3-point hitch. I think the only one to win over Ford. Money counts.
My father + partener registered patents over a product. Not cheap and difficult to enforce in Europe (1960) Wasn't worth the money. Today, less so. The Chinoise pay little head to such ideas. If it is a low production item, then less interest to big guys. Build your customer base on service, quality and delivery. ( and, possibly, adaptability to their needs)
KF

 

[rkde]

I am a mechanical design engineer and run a design consultancy and I do quite a few patents throughout the year and generally now I just advise some clients to make it and get a run out of it prior to others making it. If I can be a help you can drop a pm to me. Worth considering a NDA before you talk with people about your idea just to give you some legal cover. If you want to talk about any of the items or need some help you can give me a call

You may do better to design and get all the drawings, prototypes, FEA done and then approach a company to license it to them or sell the idea but if you go down that route it is good to have a good study of the product and information. You will need all the CAD done and all corresponding data ideally.

 

[Shox Dr]

The Chinoise pay little head to such ideas.

Seem to remember reading somewhere Patents are only good in countries that honour it.

So the likes of China who don't, just get on and built it.

More than likely not important for this but worth noting

 

[rtbcomp]

Rule 1 - keep it a secret!

Have a look on the Patent Office website for the ins and outs.

I've got an idea I'm thinking of patenting and licensing but I'm not sure how you could enforce a licensing agreement, how do you know how many the licensee has sold?

 

[MattF]

Seem to remember reading somewhere Patents are only good in countries that honour it.

Patents are country/nation specific, if I recall, so it's not so much the lack of honour but rather the lack of restriction unless you apply for the patent worldwide. There is also the problem of enforcement, which simply puts needs money thrown at it initially.

I've got an idea I'm thinking of patenting and licensing but I'm not sure how you could enforce a licensing agreement, how do you know how many the licensee has sold?

Their books/records/accounts. Companies usually have more to lose than gain if they try shafting the patent/licence holder, as if the product is a good money earner, they're losing big style if you pull their licence. T'would be a fool who'd risk that.

 

[Ed.]

A few years ago I had an idea for a product to make and went through the motions, first of all, you have to do a patent search to see if anyone else has made it or something similar, and that is anywhere in the world and even if it wasn't patented but it was made or disclosed to the public, if it was disclosed then it is "prior art" and then you can't. If it was patented in; let's say in the US but only in the US and there were no valid/current patents in your country than you would be free to make and sell it in your country but you couldn't get a patent on it as it is "prior art".

If you made it and someone else saw it and said that. Hey, I can improve on that design" then they could apply for a patent provided they could demonstrate that it was an actual improvement that hadn't been made before and probably could patent that improvement only or even the whole product, and so then you would have to contest it via patent attorneys if you believe that they breached your patent.

However having said all that, you would need very deep pockets for all of this, you might even be up to 20 grand for a full proper patent in your own country only, then you would have to apply for patents in other countries if you wanted to cover those as well, and this is even before you made the first one to sell.

If someone contested your design/patent or you contested someone elses, those patent attorneys charge like you would not believe. If someone else had a patent pending on it and you were making them as well, then the first person after they got their patent issued could slug you for a percentage of your profits for all the ones you made or even stop you from making more.

Just be aware, that just because you haven't seen it on the market, doesn't mean that someone, somewhere hasn't got a patent on it or made it public by selling it. A guy at the place I worked asked me for some advice as he heard I was doing this search for my product and said he also had a real beaut idea to make a zillion quid, hadn't seen them anywhere, I did a search and found dozens of variations.

My progress ended up costing me about $2000 for a search and I had a design patent issued for it,which is less costly and less restrictive than a standard patent and only lasts a few years only, and in the end I decided to cut my losses and not to make it as it would cost many more thousands with out even making a single bit of profit. By taking out a design patent which was granted, no one else can get a patent on it anywhere else even though it may never get made or shown, but could be still made by anyone once my patent expires.

If you are still keen to go I would advise you to do a search though a patent attorney, as they have access to many more and much larger databases that the average person cannot access. They will advise you whether or not you should pursue it or not. Good luck either way.

 

[Shox Dr]

About 15 yrs ago, IBM were spending so much money on patent searches they started to digitise all the patents. At the time the database was free to search. I'm unsure as to whether that is the case now.

Googling it does bring up www.ibm.com/patents but I can't find the page off that link to the search function.

Interesting site explaining the search function

http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/tools_strategies/bp98/fayette.htm

 

[Shox Dr]

surprise surprise

Google have one

http://www.google.com/?tbm=pts&hl=en

 

[snowcat]

I would have thought in the case of the OPs the concept of the product is not unique so Its likely to be hard to patten, Unlikely to be copied (due to the relatively small market) and most importantly too costly.

Mostly in the Ag market small parts are patterned ie a plough is impossible to patten but one particular part maybe patterned to protect the R&D, unless you have invested heavily in time and or capital expense or perfecting the design I cannot see the point in attempting to patten.

 

[Beanmetalworks]

Thanks for all advice I think for min going to just concentrate on selling the product rather than spending time trying to patent it. Might be wrong way to do it but I rather spend effort selling them.