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Getting a USB Peripheral Idea to Market?
WillAdams asks: "I have an idea for an almost embarrassingly simple USB device, which I believe would be fairly popular --- no hardware or device driver development skills though. Ideally I'd like to approach a company, hand the product idea off and just collect a small royalty. Unfortunately the most obvious choice doesn't accept product submissions. Any suggestions?"
Submit for a patent... then go to a business. Otherwise, they could steal it from you when you show them the idea.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)... oops
The idea hasn't already been patented and some company is just waiting for someone else to start producing it so they can sue them.
Go and find some USB products that are similarly 'innovative' and contact their manufacturer.
See here for some examples. Companies already producing an USB aquarium or coffee warmer may be a good start.
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
USB is so 2002.
How much would the final device sell for? If your quantities are in thousands of units and require additional R&D, you can produce the device in the United States, provided you supply the factories with the board design, casing, cabling and all the other components. But in that case consumers might be expected to pay $100-200 per device, which doesn't work if the device is simplistic.
You can outsource manufacturing to China and get the same device for pennies on the dollar, but Chinese won't talk to you unless you place an order for a million. Depending on the complexity of the device itself, the price might be around $1-5, so you're looking at initial order of $1 mln to $5 mln, which few companies have budgeted for the outside ideas. Unless it's pretty obvious that they can sell it in the United States for $20 a pop and get a million of them sold within reasonable amount of time.
If all you want is royalties on something you invented, consider filing a patent application with USPTO, final cost - $15K-$30K, depending on the patent lawyer. That would be a fairly quick way to establish yourself as the inventor of this paricular technology and would invite all the companies to participate in production and paying you a small royalty fee.
Yet another way to market it is to approach a startup in Silicon Valley. There're always some guys on the lookout for a new company, and they're willing to start a new company, but are looking for technical smarts to build the company on. Contact those guys, and you get access to the venture capital, management and marketing skills, plus a title of co-founder, if the device itself is expected to sell well, so it's worth creating a company behind this product idea.
if you'd tell me the details of your idea, first.
;>
Just between us, of course.
If you have no hardware or driver experience how do you know it's amazingly simple? What looks simple to a layman could actually be amazingly complex. The reason I point this out is because - as the sole programmer for one of my company's most critical systems - I'm constantly being bombarded with "amazingly simple" enhancement ideas from non-programmers. They'll even go so far as to write programming time into their proposals as "1 day", never haven spoken to me and having absolutely no idea what they're talking about. I'm sure this happens to the readership here as often as it happens to me. I'm just pointing out that it sounds highly probable that you are one of these people.
My advice is to pick up a few books and learn at least a little about the implementation of your idea. Who knows, you might even learn enough to develop a prototype on your own. Armed with even a very crude example, you'd have much more luck selling it. "I'll sit back in my house, spend no money, spout off ideas, and other people will throw cash at me." is a great dream, hell I've had it myself, but don't count on that happening. You are most likely going to need to do a lot of work, spend some money, and talk to a lot of people before you see a cent.
Is worth almost nothing. Before you go into flame mode, I've spent the last 10 years building my own business from the garage up without VC money so I kinda know what I'm talking about. I have good ideas all the time. Getting the good ideas is the fun part. Turning them into products, regardless of how 'simple', is the hard work.
Here's a tip, go over to comp.arch.embedded newsgroup and post your request over there. There's a bunch of talented people there and someone might be interested.
Believe it or not, you would have had a better chance a couple of years ago. Back then, there were lots of hardware engineers out of work and looking to partner with others. Now most everyone is back to work.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
... if all you've got is an idea.
There was a recent series on Australia's national television about inventors. If I learnt anything from the series it's that ideas are a dime a dozen but turning ideas into a marketable product is a lot of work.
Put some effort into your idea. Write down a design. Make it work. Build a prototype. Get a patent on the working invention. The point of a patent is to reward the person who turns the idea into reality. If you don't know how to build it then LEARN HOW. If you don't want to put in the effort then you don't deserve to profit from the idea. Simple as that.
In any event, I would bet dollars to donuts that your idea is not unique. If you can think of it somebody else can think of it too, and they probably already have. But you will probably find, like many of the inventors on the afore-mentioned television series, that the original idea would never have worked. Through the process of building the invention they refined the idea until it does work. That's the valuable part of the invention. That's what makes them special people. That's what you should be doing, rather than thinking about royalty payments.
PS: I have no encouragement or sympathy for any person who expects to "hand off" their idea to a company and wait for the royalty cheques. I think it's disgusting that you are madly keen to start receiving royalty cheques yet so disinterested in being involved in the creation of the invention.
Three things.
First, if you feel this is a good idea, then write it up and file a provisional patent. It only costs $80 to file a provisional and it will provide you with one year of protection before you file an actual patent. You don't have to have any legal knowledge to file a provisional. The only thing to realize is that your full patent filing will have to match up with the concepts written in your provisional in order to be valid. The only person who will ever look at the provisional is the patent examiner. Diagrams go a long way here, because they can be interpreted more liberally than words.
Second, if you have any affiliation with a University, you may want to talk to the tech-transfer office. At my university, students, faculty, and staff can bring ideas to the tech-transfer office and they will help you with a provisional (for a percentage of future royalties, of course.) If you can find a company to license the idea to after the provisional is filed, they might even help you file a full patent.
Third, the average cost of litigation for patent infringement (assuming you get a patent) is around $750,000. This is a lot of loot to shell out for infringement, and they usually get settled out of court by arranging for licensing.
At the end of the day, you want to make sure that you have this thing wrapped up before you go around telling companies about it. Even if you want to go around and make companies sign NDA's, you will still need a lawyer to write those up for you (if you expect the NDA to hold up), which could cost quite a bit as well.
-grando