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?"

Comments

Patent Submission...

[MadWicKdWire]

Submit for a patent... then go to a business. Otherwise, they could steal it from you when you show them the idea.

Re:Patent Submission...

[uradu]

Actually, put your idea to paper and have it notarized. That way you formally create prior art, and if you ever figure out a way to commercialize the idea, you won't be restricted by potential later patents.

Re:Patent Submission...

[beegle]

The parent post has the right idea: get a patent.

A bit of advise, though: there are people through this article claiming that patents cost $20k or more in legal fees.

Bullshit!

Sure, you can spend that if you want to. Just visit a patent lawyer with a nothing more than a vague idea about something that you'd like to patent. At several hundred dollars an hour, the bill adds up quickly.

The alternative is to go to the patent database, read a few patents to get a feel for the format, buy a few books, and write up your own patent. Then, search for prior art yourself and flag anything that's even remotely close. After you've done this work, visit a patent attorney with your patent and research notes and ask him to review it. If you've done your homework and have a reasonably well-written patent, the attorney won't have to do much more than read it. The total cost will probably end up at $2000-$3000 after filing fees.

A bit of warning: good technical artists are -expensive-, so think about ways to minimize the number of diagrams.

My father has several patents, and this is the method that he used.

manufacturers

[selfsealingstembolt]

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.

Simple?

[digime]

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.

A product idea in itself...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

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.

provisional patent

[grando]

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