Guides for Inventors
Inventing takes courage and persistence. We can help you through it. Read below for guides on inventing and some of the steps involved in the process.
Knock-Out Search
In the course of your search, you want to come up with as-solid-as-possible answers to the following three questions:
Is my invention unique?
Will anyone buy it?
Can I make a profit?
Basically we start with a general Google search, then a patent-focused “prior art” search, then a scan of the market, then we put together an “elevator pitch” to try out on friends, family and advisers.
A knock-out search is not the same as the comprehensive research you’ll do once you decide to move ahead with a project and put together a business plan, but it should be enough to help you decide if your invention has value and is worth taking to the next level, whatever you determine that may be.
Background
If you can easily knock out your invention, you can save yourself a lot of time, money and stress down the road OR you may end up with a better more refined, practical version of your invention. You may discover ways to refine your invention even further to make it better, for example, because you’ll have a better idea of the environment for the invention. The knock-out search can help you determine what some of the big issues will be around your invention, your competitive advantage, and the potential for payback, which could influence your decision to proceed or a particular direction to choose.
Your knock-out search will look at the patent field for your invention. A patent is a good thing to have because it allows you to have a ‘monopoly,’ a nice competitive advantage, for a number of years, allowing for you to benefit from your investments in developing your invention. However it’s not always possible to patent something (you can view basics of what can be patented here). There are other areas where patents get complicated, such as software and methods of doing business; that’s beyond the scope of our knock-out search.
In addition to patents, there are other avenues to competitive advantage, such as trade secrets; for example the recipes for Pepsi and Coca-Cola are simply well-kept secrets. There is also ‘first mover advantage’ which simply comes from being the first on the market to offer a product or service.
A scan of the market is necessary to determine the playing field and the possible paths to success and riches of your invention. It’s not easy to be successful at getting to the riches, but perseverance and knowledge of what you’re getting into from the start will help.
Your uniqueness and marketability studies will pull out the key things you need to know for your potential competitive advantage, which must be clear in all the questions you answer in your elevator pitch.
Assumptions play a key role in this kind of analysis. You can make all the assumptions you want, but the value of the resulting statements will depend on the value of your assumptions, and will make a big difference in the persuasiveness of your arguments. So an assumption such as “this research report by this credible source claims this market will grow by this percentage over the next ten years” sounds much better than “My cousin Bobby just loves it and he’s usually right about this kind of stuff.”
Assumptions we are starting off with in regards to your invention (i.e this is what this study’s most useful for):
Your invention is relatively new and you have not already disclosed your invention publicly, so basically it’s still a “secret.” So you haven’t already posted it on the web, talked about it at a conference, published a paper about it, etc. If you have, it’s been within the last 12 months; once 12 months have passed your date of public disclosure, you can’t get a patent. (But you may still have other options as already mentioned, so don’t stop reading.)
General Search
Pop the name of your invention or the related area into a Google search. Do a bit of poking around to see what’s out there already, if anything. You might see something right away that will lead you to an existing product. You may find very similar things. You might find a more common term for your invention than what you’ve been calling it, and start to kind of see where it fits in. Keep a list.
Note: Not finding anything might not necessarily be good news; it could mean that there’s simply no interest in the topic of your invention, which would not be good, because that would most likely mean no one would be there to buy it. Also, a requirement for a patent is that it be ‘useful.’
Unless you find your exact invention in your basic search, move on to the USPTO prior art search.
If you feel absolutely certain or you have been advised by a patent lawyer that your invention won’t meet the qualifications for a patent, but you haven’t found anything in your general search, move on to the marketability study.
USPTO prior art search
Doing a thorough ‘prior art’ search by looking through the US Government’s Patent and Trademark database will give you a good indication of how novel and non-obvious your idea is (another requirement for a patent). Also, you can come up with a nice list of terms to do further searching on your invention in other places. It’s also good to do a patentability search early on because, if you immediately find that your invention is already patented, you might have to start coming up with a new strategy or different embodiment of your invention.
- Go to http://patft.uspto.gov/.
- In the left-hand “Patents” column, click on “Quick Search.”
- Enter one or two terms that describe your invention and search under “All Fields” to start. Start a list of your terms so you can recall what you have already searched under. Make a note of anything close you find under each search term or combination of search terms.
- Dig deeper by using search terms that you find in inventions similar to yours. Combine different search parameters such as “Assignee Name” if you find a company that specializes in the area of your invention, combined with one of your search terms in the “Abstract” field. This will also help you to whittle out what your invention is NOT, i.e. you can knock out some search terms and words that may seem close to your invention at first glance, but by definition are not related.
- Now go back to http://patft.uspto.gov/.
- In the right hand “Applications” column, click on “Quick Search.”
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 for patent applications. These are patents that have been filed but not yet issued.
Note: There is also a lot of information about the specific definition of a patent, the process, etc., in other parts of the USPTO.gov website, so it’s not a bad idea to take some time on this website.
In-depth Google search
Once you’ve done your patent search, you can also do a Google search and look on some other websites with your best/closest search terms to see if anything else pops up. Take the closest search terms you came up with in your prior art search, and search in Google. You may want put your search term in quotes to make it a very specific search. This will most likely lead you to other documents that may reference similar patents that you didn’t find, or towards research that has been done/published in the area of your invention. This is just another way to find knock-outs. Here are some other search sites you could try:
http://www.google.com/patents
http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/search/en/search.jsf
You don’t have to give up at this point, even if you find something very similar. Unless you find something exactly the same as your invention, you should move on to the Marketability study.
Once you’ve completed the ‘prior art’ search and your invention hasn’t yet been knocked out entirely, try to figure out if there’s anyone out there who will buy your invention, and how much money you might be able to make out of it.
Target Market, Size and Trends
Who will buy your product? Try to think of not only the very obvious groups, but also possibly sub-groups or groups that may switch over, etc. Come up with as large a target market as possible, but make sure it’s believable.
Once you have your target market, try to quantify it. Possibly your target market and its size is a small local group, but that doesn’t mean your invention has no value. Either way, this is good for you to know, as it could help you decide if it’s worth it to spend the money on the patent or to otherwise pursue the project.
Also, make sure it’s correct, because this will have a big bearing on your possible market size. So if you develop a component for a cell phone, you will not be selling directly to buyers of cell phones but to the makers of cell phones; therefore you will not look at the numbers for sales of cell phones, but rather what cell phone makers are paying for the parts.
So in the example where you have a new component for a cell phone, try a Google search under “cell phone components market size” and see what you come up with. Make sure it’s relevant to what you’re looking for, and is a credible and timely source. Here’s an example of one of the useful results from this search:
http://eetimes.eu/en/cell-phone-chip-markets-and-ranking.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222904624:
The silicon chips and other components that go into cell phones are set to make up an almost $50 billion market in 2010 and it is expected to reach a size of $71 billion in 2014, according to market research firm Forward Concepts. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 9.5 percent over the period 2010 to 2014.
In your cell phone component case it might end up as a license deal where you will license the technology/product to the company who will integrate your invention into their products, and pay you a royalty whenever they sell a product that includes your invention. It might seem hard to come up with an estimate in this case, but what you can do is try and determine the importance of your component in the overall product, and the impact your invention will have on the product’s performance or price. If the impact is large, that’s good of course, but even a very small royalty from sales of your invention included in a product with very high sales volume could make you a lot of money. Try to come up with a number based on what percentage of the total market you believe you could take; make it a small percentage to keep your assumptions reasonable and realistic. Most firms will only take a fraction of a total share of a market; so if you can say something like “even if I only take one-tenth of one percent of the market, I’ll make a billion dollars,” that sounds pretty good.
If you are selling a stand-alone new gadget, try to determine the demographics of your group, and come up with a size of that group, and multiply it by the price you think you could charge. You can go to the US Census website (link below), and Google searches can play a key role. For example, if you’ve come up with a cure for cancer, pop “number of people with cancer in the US” into a Google search and you’ll get several useful results. Whatever search term you start with, if you see that you’re not getting the information you really are looking for, try modifying some of your terms.
Finally, try to determine what the existing and future prospects are for your target market. Is this market already saturated with big firms selling similar things? Would you be the first-mover in an up and coming market? How do these things effect the potential for your invention? You may come up with something that says your market is small, declining, dominated by one or two entrenched firms, or the like; this is not necessarily good news but does not have to kill your project either. But it’s always better if the future ‘trends’ look good for your target market.
Follow links below for more in-depth information.
Competition and Competitive Advantage
Determine your competition and what they’re selling. Who is already selling products similar to yours, for how much and how many? What products can people buy instead of yours that are close substitutes? Are the competing firms big or small? Try to get an overall idea of how hard it’s going to be to jump into the existing market given the competitive field, and any other obstacles to entry such as government regulations. Your competition may have a big advantage over you if the market’s highly regulated and they already have established the paths to get through the regulation for example. Map out the playing field; then, figure out your competitive advantage.
Your competitive advantage is probably the key thing you have to determine about your invention. What is it about your invention that makes it faster, cheaper, better, or in any other way above and beyond what the competition is offering? What is the pain or problem that is solves that will compel people to go out and buy it? Try to come up with specific measurements or data that you can compare to what’s already on the market. Also, try to estimate what your invention will cost to produce, and then add in what you’d want to make on top of that so you can come up with a basic ‘price’ so you can see how it compares to the competition, and whether or not you’ll be able to make a profit. The better you can back up the assumptions you make to come up with your numbers, the better your chances of being able to convince people that your invention has value.
This is a balance of cost and benefits. If you have a great invention that will enable people to do something better but it costs significantly more, it may not be good enough. If, however, you can prove that your invention will enable people to do something better while also making it cheaper for them, possibly that’s more interesting. It depends on what you’re looking at, so sometimes an additional cost may be justified for example, but only if the increased benefit is substantial.
Links
How to find your target market: http://www.ehow.com/how_2156161_find-target-market.html
US Census data: http://www.census.gov/
Entpreneur.com: Target market, size and trends: http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessplans/businessplancoachtimberry/article78002.html
SBA Website: Marketing section of a business plan: http://www.sba.gov/content/market-analysis
Step 3: Elevator Pitch and Go/No Go Decision
Basically, you want to come up with solid answers to the following three questions:
Is my invention unique?
Will anyone buy it?
Can I make a profit?
Answer these three questions and develop an ‘elevator pitch.’ This is a 30- to 60-second speech you can make that will convince an investor to give you a chance to pitch your whole idea. After you give your elevator pitch, make sure you’re ready to answer questions with the data to back up your answers.
Be Careful: You don’t want to give up any of the key secrets of your invention, i.e. anything that you would want to be able to protect with a patent. Talk about what your invention does, not how it works. Focus on the benefits.
Now, try out your elevator pitch on friends and family, or mentors or advisers you trust. Get their feedback. Possible next steps include:
- Proceed with a patent with your own money
- Find someone (a partner, bank, etc.) to loan you the money for a patent
- Go ahead with the project without the patent and still protect your trade secret or first-mover advantage (again, you may have to find money from family or friends)
- Work on the invention a bit more to make it more patentable or marketable
- Release your invention for the free benefit of the public and bask in the glory
- Abandon the project
If you have any questions about your knock-out search or want some feedback on your results, contact Amy McMorrow Hunter at the SIUC Technology Transfer Program. If you’re ready to move ahead with your invention to develop a product or business, contact Lynn Anderson-Lindberg at the SIUC Small Business Incubator.