Every entrepreneur today has lots and lots of ideas.  And it’s the process of evaluating these ideas, and picking out the winners, that is crucial to your own success.

We also know that you need to protect those ideas that are going places.  You need to lockdown any intellectual property, [...]]]>

Every entrepreneur today has lots and lots of ideas.  And it’s the process of evaluating these ideas, and picking out the winners, that is crucial to your own success.

We also know that you need to protect those ideas that are going places.  You need to lockdown any intellectual property, and stop those pesky copycats from stealing your thunder.

So here’s our Idea Discovery Pack to help you to pick the winnning ideas, and to help you kick start those ideas down the road to commercialisation.

Our Idea Discovery Pack covers:

• Patent searching and how to search for patents throughout the world.
• Our tips and tricks to help you with the patent search process.
• Trade mark searching, and how to be sure you can use the name that you have chosen.
• Devising a strategy to protect your ideas.

The pack is completely free and delivered to your email inbox immediately.  We realise with new ideas there is no time to lose.  You don’t want to see it on the market, only without you having a piece of the action.  Get your free Idea Discovery Pack here.

We’ve all experienced the value of running a structured brainstorm or idea generation session to come up with some new ideas.  There are some excellent books on the subject to help to get those ideas flowing, such as those by Edward De Bono.  You may well have come across his [...]]]>

We’ve all experienced the value of running a structured brainstorm or idea generation session to come up with some new ideas.  There are some excellent books on the subject to help to get those ideas flowing, such as those by Edward De Bono.  You may well have come across his 6 hats.  But more often than not the session generates lots of ideas.  You discuss them as a group to attempt to filter them down, but everyone seems to have different favourites.  For product ideas, there are two key questions that you need to answer.  The ideas that tick the box for both of these are those that have the most potential to take forwards.

The first question is “has it been done before?”.  Even if selling ‘me too’ products is part of your company strategy, you still need to be sure that if you were to proceed you wouldn’t infringe another’s patent rights.  The only way to answer this question is to do your research.  Browse product catalogues of all of the companies that you think might sell something similar.  Google the idea and Google the problem that it solves.  This should flag up other people’s solutions to the same problem, and indicate whether it has been done before.  Wouldn’t you rather find out now than downstream when you have made a big commitment in both time and money?

The other way to find out if the idea has been done before is to do a patent search.  This will determine which ideas are novel and inventive and could warrant patent protection.  It will also help you to see if your competitors are working on anything similar, and flag up any possible infringement issues.  For free help getitng started with patent searching, download our free Idea Discovery Pack here.

The second question to ask is “will it sell?”.  You need to test the market and understand your ideal customer before you’ll be able to answer this question.  Again it comes down to doing your research, and making a fair guesstimate of market size.

Answering these two questions provides you with two filters to help whittle down the results of your brainstorm to just those ideas with the most potential.

We work with a team of innovators, The Imagination Factory Ltd.  We attend their Imagination Sessions and provide the IP filter for all of their ideas that they think have merit.  For each idea we run a patent search and one of our Patent Attorneys provides an opinion to help answer the first question – “Is the idea new?”, and therefore could worthwhile patent protection be achieved?

We’ve also supported a BBC television show that invited new product ideas, and helped to develop these ideas as part of the series.  They enlisted our help to be sure that the ideas that were selected were new, and not just copycats items.

To hear more about how we can support your brainstorming sessions, do get in touch with one of our attorneys.  Our patent searches start from just £95.  You can read more about our services here.

Did you all manage to catch the action in the Den this week?  Well here’s our roundup of the IP behind the pitches in this episode, from inflatable car beds to doggie goggles…

Karnap – Inflatable Car Bed

First into the Den was John McMonagle with his Karnap, inflatable [...]]]>  

Did you all manage to catch the action in the Den this week?  Well here’s our roundup of the IP behind the pitches in this episode, from inflatable car beds to doggie goggles…

Karnap – Inflatable Car Bed

First into the Den was John McMonagle with his Karnap, inflatable car bed invention.  Both Theo and Peter scrambled into the car to put the bed to the test.

We’ve failed to find any published patent applications in John’s name relating to car beds, but we did find a number of proposals to convert the back of a pick-up truck into a bed!

Caravan Bed

It seemed to be the week for bed-related inventions.  The Collerans proposed a caravan bed system, with memory foam mattress and duvet all-in-one.

Here is their PCT application.  The newest Dragon, Hilary, saw potential in the idea, and even with the lack of knowledge of their company accounts, she took a punt and placed an investment.

There are of course potential markets above and beyond caravanning!

Tanning Aid

Possibly one of the most entertaining pitches came from Glenn Harden with his tanning aid.  Here’s a drawing from his patent application that he filed in 1996.

Just a couple of years left to exploit his patent before it is free for use by all.  We can’t help but feel it might be of better use as a stencil for spray tans!

Doggie Goggles

There was also a pitch for a line of pet accessories, to include sunglasses, goggles and diamond-encrusted collars.

Surprisingly there’s a lot of prior art in this area, one of them being US patent specification US5732415.

We also had the tribe from Saatchi and Saatchi with their great plans to takeover the world through popcorn, and their Love da Pop line.  Peter Jones spotted much potential in the trio, and in the brand that they were building.  Could they be the next Levi Roots?

We’ll be back with our IP Behind next week’s episode in the Den, so make sure you come and take a look.  In the meantime, if you need help protecting your idea, just drop us a line.

So the Dragons are back on our screens – filling the void left by The Apprentice for all of us at The Patent Factory.  But everytime we watch the show we can’t help but feel the need to check out the IP behind the pitches.  So here’s our roundup of [...]]]>  

So the Dragons are back on our screens – filling the void left by The Apprentice for all of us at The Patent Factory.  But everytime we watch the show we can’t help but feel the need to check out the IP behind the pitches.  So here’s our roundup of some of last night’s ideas…

The Present Club

A wedding gift list service – only this time for childrens’ birthdays.  As with all websites, you cannot protect the idea behind them.  You can only protect the name through trade mark registration, and you also enjoy copyright in the website code (providing of course you own the code) and the look of the site itself.  It seemed the Dragons placed their investment largely based on the use of a good name, and the fact that the lady behind the idea had secured the .com address.  Perhaps the Dragons will set up their own gift lists on there for fast cars and helicopters!

Splashbacks

We won’t linger around this idea for too long!  But there’s a considerable amount of prior art in this area, and it seems a number of people working on ideas in and around the loo.  We’ve found at least 10 anti-splashback balls for the toilet in patent literature, most of which being from China and Japan.  Here’s one example…

Anti-Obesity Relaxation Chair

Who would have thought you could be a couch potato and lose weight simply by listening to the sounds of the seaside.  The closest we found was a ‘Chair for Diet’ from Korea, which we think would prove far more effective.  Imagine if whenever you sat down your chair told you how much you weigh.  There’s be far less people sat on their backsides!

There are of course a number of massage chairs in patent literature with sound-producing equipment.  Here’s one of them…

We’ll be back this time next week to take a look at the IP behind the pitches in the Den next week.  In the meantime, if you have an idea you’d like to get started with developing, take a look at our Idea Discovery Pack.

So, you’ve had an idea.  It’s a widget, a gadget… something with moving parts made up of technical bits and bobs.  You’ve scoured Google and the high street to see if anyone has beaten you to it, but you’ve failed to find anything on the market that is quite the [...]]]>

So, you’ve had an idea.  It’s a widget, a gadget… something with moving parts made up of technical bits and bobs.  You’ve scoured Google and the high street to see if anyone has beaten you to it, but you’ve failed to find anything on the market that is quite the same.  You know you need to protect it, to have something to license, something to attract investment, or even to deter copycats.  You know that you need a patent.

So why should you bother to do a patent search, before you get shifting with making it look the business, and before you instruct your patent attorney to prepare and file a patent application?  Here’s our top 3 reasons why an patent search can be invaluable for any idea at this early stage in the development process.

1. The requirements to achieve patent protection for your idea in the UK and Europe are that is must be novel, and therefore it cannot exist anywhere in the world prior to the date that you file your patent application.  There’s a wealth of ideas locked away in patent literature.  You’ve bothered to search products through Google and in high street stores, so why not invest some time in searching patents too.  We’ve heard the stories where people have skipped over this stage, only to discover downstream that their idea has been done before.  Whilst this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the road for an idea, wouldn’t you rather find out before you’ve raided the piggy bank and spent considerable time and money on the project?

2. A patent search can help to support the design development process.  You need to grasp whether your idea really is new, and steer around any pertinent prior art that you uncover when patent searching.  The patent specifications that you find might help to pad out the development process, and trigger new ideas for optional extras or modifications.  Patent literature can be an invaluable resource during the product development process.

3. A patent search at an early stage can help save you money.  The going rates for preparing and filing a patent application in the UK through a patent attorney tend to be in the region of £2k to £3k.  Add this to the fact that to reach this stage you’ll have no doubt spent a fair bit of money refining the design and being sure your widget will work.  Imagine if you waited for the UK IPO to do their searches againt your patent application, only to discover at this late stage that someone had thought of your idea before.  Worse still, that it is disclosed in a patent that is granted and in force in all of your key countries, and to proceed with the idea you risk infringing another’s rights.  It’s certainly a long way back to the drawing board!

So to save yourself time and money, provide support for the product development stage, and provide reassurance that chances are you can achieve worthwhile patent protection for your idea, you would be mad not to delve into the depths of patent literature prior to making any considerable investment.

We offer help with the patent search process here.  Or why not download our Idea Discovery Pack to help you to kick start the patent searching process.