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Should I Publish Or Patent?
BorgeStrand writes 'Patenting is an expensive process, even coming up with some sort of proof that your idea is unique (and thereby try to attract financing) may be prohibitive for the lone inventor. So what do you folks out there do when you come up with a good idea but don't have the means to patent it or market it to someone who will pay for the patenting process? And how much sense does it really make for the lone inventor to patent something? Would it make more sense to publish the whole idea, and make it (and my inventive brainpower) up for grabs? If my ideas are indeed valuable, what is the best way to gain anything from them without investing too much financially? What is your experience?'
In a less sarcastic, slightly more useful vein, patenting something is expensive but not prohibitively so. A few thousand dollars, unless you get unlucky and the patent office starts getting all resistant. Though, because of the state of the legal profession today you might be able to find a patent lawyer cheap.
The following assumes this is a hardware patent you have in mind.
The days of patenting for the lone inventor are over, seriously. And what if you do patent it? You'll end up spend the bulk of your time, brain power, and meager resources defending it. Unless you have the resources to hire a cadre of lawyers, you won't even be able to defend infringements. And we've not even discussed international patents... which still won't stop Chinese knockoffs (at least not for the foreseeable future).
For insights into why the patent process is seldom useful for individuals:
http://bit.ly/12x7EJ
http://bit.ly/3glVfj
There is a lot of money being made in the (e.g.) open-hardware arena: you make a gadget (brilliant idea or not), sell a couple hundred or thousand, make some money and move on to the next thing (see Arduino, Chumby, SeeedStudio, Adafruit, Sparkfun). These guys publish the specs of pretty much everything they make, with enough detail that anybody else could copy it. Yet they are rather successful for small (closely held) businesses.
So my advice is:
Step 1: make
Step 2: publish (gets you publicity for your gadget BTW)
Step 3: open up a store front and sell
Step 4: ??? (there is no step 4)
Step 5: Profit!!!
It's easy to get anything manufactured in small quantities these days. And by the time somebody bothers to clone your idea (which kind proves that you must have made money, in a backhanded compliment kind of way), the hope is you've made some cash, and can spend your time innovating on the next great thing.
This is the secret to happiness my friend.
Do this - publish your idea in the most obscure way possible. Don't put it on the web. Instead, make sure some library like the one Sarah Palin likes to ban books from in Wasilla, Alaska. I kid you not - this is advice I've had from multiple patent attorneys. It protects your idea, and is nearly free, without much chance of tipping off your competitors.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
I'm going to get flamed by the usual losers for this, but anyway...
I hold three software patents. One was sold as part of a deal that made me several million dollars back in the 1980s. One made me $600,000 in licensing fees. I'm pursuing an infringement claim against DoD on the third. I also have another patent pending. I put "Inventor" on my tax return.
Each of these patents was an early patent in an area where previous attempts to solve the problem had failed. In each case, the patented technology came with a working application or a successful demo. So these weren't just "ideas", they were ideas that worked. That's when patents are worthwhile - you've solved a hard problem, you're not with a big enough company to exploit it, and doing a startup doesn't seem to be the right answer.
The key point here is that a patent plus a demo version is more valuable than either alone.
This history isn't all that unusual here in Silicon Valley.