Top 10 Invention Mistakes Part 1 – The First 5
For first time inventors trying to bring an idea to reality is like driving in the dark, without directions, on unfamiliar roads and no GPS. There is no universal invention road map, but there are known obstacles everyone must avoid. In an attempt to help inventors safely find their way, I have compiled a top 10 list of common mistakes. The list is taken from my decades of real-life experiences working with inventors. Offered here is Part 1 covering the first five of the terrible ten. Inventors be forewarned.
MISTAKE #1: CONFUSING AN IDEA WITH AN INVENTION
All inventions start with an idea on how to solve a problem, improve an existing product or fill a need in the marketplace, but Ideas are not Inventions. One of my favorite analogies when trying to explain the difference between the two comes from Star Trek. Rush hour in any big city conjures thoughts of “beam me up Scotty.” That’s the idea – a way of avoiding traffic by scrambling a person’s molecules, transporting those molecules through space to a desired location, and then reconnecting the molecules completing the journey in seconds. But how are the molecules scrambled, transported and reconnected? Being able to make everything work properly is the invention. Star Trek did anticipate one current invention – the cellular telephone with talk, text and video capabilities.
MISTAKE #2: FAILURE TO FIRST DO RESEARCH
You are sure that you have the next big thing and can’t wait to get it on the market. Your inclination is to put the pedal to the metal and hire engineers, marketers and a patent attorney. Stop and take a breath. First, hire professionals to search the marketplace and do a patent search of issued patents and published patent pendings. This will be money very well spent. And in order to be sure the research is as thorough as possible, spend your own time looking in stores and on the internet for similar products. Keep in mind that less than 10% of patents are on the market, so something might be patented or pending that you could be infringing upon. Look before you leap.
MISTAKE #3: TRYING TO DO EVERYTHING YOURSELF
No one can do everything. This is especially true if you have a full-time job, or you’re not an engineer, or a licensed patent attorney, and you didn’t marry the manufacturer’s son or daughter. You need help – end of story. There are good people and bad people in every walk of life, the invention business included. Become educated about what’s really needed to commercialize an invention. Be careful, avoid deals that sound too good to be true, hire the best people you can afford and use only licensed professionals. And of course, get everything in writing up front.
MISTAKE #4: EXPECTING PROFESSIONALS TO WORK FOR FREE
I am constantly amazed that an unknown and unproven inventor would expect engineers, draftsmen, patent attorneys and marketers to work for free. Sometimes as compensation, inventors will offer 10% or so of any future earnings. This is an urban myth with no basis in reality. Who works for free? I don’t know how the concept of free work came to be; but, let me state very clearly that a first time inventor will need to spend money, probably thousands, to get their invention researched, engineered, patented and marketed. Perhaps investors can be found, but it will take money to make money. (I am willing to hire anyone willing to work for free.)
MISTAKE #5: NOT DOING WHAT YOU KNOW
Invent what you know. Because ideas are worthless but inventions can be valuable, it’s therefore logical to invent things that you know something about. If you’re not an electro-mechanical engineer, don’t try to invent an automobile that can run on magnetic energy without fuel. If you’re not a medical professional or a bio-chemist, refrain from inventing medications, ointments and salves. But if you’re a carpenter and you made a tool that saves time or results in better craftsmanship, be sure to fully explore its potential. You’ve got a real invention that could make you some money.
That’s the first five mistakes for inventors to avoid. The road is long so stay tuned for six through ten.
1. InventSAI
2. Ad-Gen
3. Montgomery Patent and Design
This post offers a lot of basic, yet very useful points that may not be obvious to all first-time inventors. I imagine it’s pretty easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of developing a new idea and the potential to make money, which would undoubtedly lead to some overlooked details.
Very good points to consider in this process. Looking forward to the other ones to follow.
Hello Mr. Montgomery, you have some good points. As of now i am broke and i am looking for an open window. I have tried to apply with your company and i had not realized how much there is behind it till now. How would you suggest someone in my predicament become succesful with his or her inventions and ideas?
I have been working with invent SAI for a few months now and they are a great company to use. They have done a great job in walking me through step by step in getting my invention patented.
I have taken a look at most of the other invention companies,and this one seems to be the best . I am excited to see what happens with my idea.Hopefully my next comment will be about our success with it.
Is the (phony looking) “Official Record of Invention” email i got from this site good for anything? Where do i got from here? And i know that i will have to spend ALOT of money but how far can i take my idea for free?
Mr. Upson,
First, if you don’t want to use my Official Record of Invention, you should learn about how to develop an Inventor’s Notebook. The way the patent laws are today, establishing a “first to invent” date and “diligently” work towards filing a patent application are important to establishing ownership of your invention. The previous sentence has two important points: 1) establish your official date of conception, and 2) work diligently towards filing a patent. You must do both. Another important piece of advice is to tell no one about your invention, that includes family and friends. The answer to your second question as to how far you can go with your invention for free is nowhere. No one will work with an unknown inventor with an unproven invention for free. To do it for free, you will need to do a lot of work at the library, maybe take some courses, contact your Small Business Development Center and perfect your invention while making regular entries in your Inventor’s Notebook. My Invention Ideas Blog site has many articles on these two subjects which could be starting points for you. And by the way, don’t count on any government grants. Good luck to you.
Invention Guru
The most important point in the inventing process, for me, is, what is the true value of a U.S. Patent?
In a ‘global world’, connected by light speed electronic ‘windows into everything’, especially public records, what is the U.S. PTO really offering as a protection? What are their ‘tools’ with teeth?
To my knowledge, there has been an attempt to place all ‘industrialized’ nations under a Patent Treaty that respects the intellectual property of each respective nation, etc… But then, you have countries like Thailand that purposefully avoided entering into the Treaty, and could be ‘knocking off’ your invention before you can get to your car in the parking lot, after filing.
Where is the VALUE in all the headache, heartache, stress, expense and struggle? What can the U.S. PTO really do to ‘protect’ your property, in a world where every other agency of gov’t requires that we find something to protect our property FROM IT!
What are your thoughts on these points and questions, Mr. Montgomery?
I would like to see an FAQ section of your site, with items like this, so everyone can have something REAL to worry about now.
Thanks for your efforts to assist, though.
Hello and thanks to all of you for your input and thoughts. I have marked this site as a favorite and will visit it frequently. I was trying to find a show I watched one night and found it very interesting. I do believe now it was called “Shark Tank” and it comes on Friday nights on channel 10 so I will look forward to watching it again tonight. I think that is how I found this website. The information is awesome. Now here’s my story, though it is rather long. Many years ago, even before the internet was available, that tells you how old I might be, okay I’m now 56 years old and proud of it, I came up with several ideas that I wanted to invent. Since the internet wasn’t available and I didn’t have the funds to hire an attorney, my ideas were simply ideas. I did confide them to one person being my Mother. She is an extremely smart person and had always helped me with any issue I had so I thought with her knowledge and resourses she might know how to direct me to the right resourses. She thought my ideas were very good, but at the time she was a Director of a large corporation and her job was extremely demanding, so I assumed, she just didn’t have the time to deal with my issues. So time went by and years passed and eventually my ideas became available on the open market. I became extremely discouraged and thought, “Wow, that could have been me!” I’m sure I’m not the first to have experienced this feeling. Most of my ideas come out of convenience as these did. They were the cordless phone, handsfree headset, windex wipes and pledge wipes. It could be hereditary since my Grandfather on my Mother’s side was a self made Entrepreneur and he was a wonderful man. Unfortunately, his fortune led him to owning many racehorses at the track and he grew a passion for “betting the ponies” as my family calls it. And his fortune became a mis-fortune. But we loved him all the same and he lived a wonderful life. Some years later, the internet had just come into play. We had just begun having access to it in the large corporation I worked for. At the time, they had a program called “Go for the Gold” whereas employees could put in suggestions or ideas and if they were accepted they would be awarded monetarily. I put a few in and one of them was pretty awesome. See we had been filing paper practices in notebooks. It was an extremely boring job and it seemed as though the books were never up to date. Pages were misfiled, therefore it wasn’t a very good system at all I thought. So I submitted an idea that the practices be scanned and placed on the internet for viewing. I was so surprised when I received a letter from my company saying that my idea was very good but unfortunately they had already thought of it themselves and in fact were working on it. Well maybe they were and maybe they weren’t. I’ll never really know. All I know is sometime afterward, not only practices, but any and every kind of literature the corporation had in booklet form was accessible via the internet. I couldn’t help feeling they’d stolen my idea. Like I said, I’ll never know for sure. After that, I became afraid to do anything with my ideas since I just didn’t know who I could trust. I still to this day don’t know who to trust or how to go about doing anything with my many ideas. They just flow to me in my head. And it’s sad to say, they’re only ideas. I can’t afford now to do much with them and I don’t know who to trust. So can anyone help me out there. What do you suggest I do? I was forced to retire in 2006 from that large corporation that I worked for 32 years for due to back problems. So I have time, but little funds available now. I do have plenty of what I feel are good ideas but due to my lack of funds I may need to find someone trustworthy who may be willing to invest in them in order to make them come to life. Also as I’m reading, I need to find out if any of them have already been pattened or have a patten pending I assume. Thanks for any and all input and I appreciate hearing from you. I enjoy reading all of your own stories and I wish all of you much success in your journeys. Hopefully you won’t have to wait as long as I have to get going on your way to success. You young people have so much more advantages now that technology has advanced so much. I have come to love researching the net! Although I have to admit, I do spend way too much of my time researching and not enough time doing many things that I really need to do. Better go work of cleaning the house. Bye for now! Good Luck to all of you!
I am glad that you enjoy reading my blog. It means a lot to me. Regarding your issue about your company stealing your idea about scanning documents, etc. — your idea was a business idea that doesn’t sound like a patent. You had an efficiency idea for your job. Anyway, when you work for a company, they own whatever you come up with while on the job or pertaining to your job. So stop fretting. Regarding your new ideas — the most important advice is to avoid anything that sounds too good to be true. To be an inventor, you need to make the invention and see if it works. If you can’t do it yourself, I suggest trying to find someone you know and can trust to work with you. Get an agreement upfront as to ownership of any inventions that results from working together. Good luck.
Invention Guru