Inventors Take Care

Opinions and suggestions :

A quotation from a sucsessful and experienced inventor.

Most independent inventors fail to profit from their inventions and most end up losing money. The common hope is that they will sell their inventions to manufacturing companies which will develop, manufacture, and market the inventions and pay royalties, or a fixed price, to the inventors. This is a very, very rare occurrence. Why?

Most companies already have a backlog of ideas of their own awaiting development and don't want any more.

Most companies fear legal entanglement with outside inventors. Many refuse to look at outside inventions unless they are covered by issued patents and confine their consideration to the allowed claims in those patents. Some have separate departments to respond to inventors. Some send a discouraging list of conditions under which they will even look at outside inventions.

Some may actually use the invention and defy the inventor to sue for infringement of his patent.

A number of companies offer to sell your invention for you, for a fee. I have never heard of a success. Before giving money to such a company, see the following web sites suggested in the November 2003 issue of the IEEE magazine, Spectrum:

* National Inventor Fraud Center Inc. http://www.inventorfraud.com

* InventorEd Inc. http://www.inventored.org/caution

* United Inventors Association http://www.uiausa.com

* Federal Trade Commission http://www.ftc.gov/search

* U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/co/iip/data/.htm#LicensePromotion

Kamm's Law: "Most people are hostile to most new ideas and are at their most creative when inventing objections to them." www.ljkamm/inventor.htm"

All of this is extremely frustrating, but unfortunately, true.