Whispers
Finance Books

Will It Sell?
by James E. White

It's estimated that only two of one thousand invention ideas are ever successful in the marketplace. Along the way, some $300 million is wasted annually by independent inventors on product development and patents for inventions that have no chance of ever making money. But that could be about to change. Veteran marketer and inventor James E. White has recently published Will It Sell? How To Determine If Your Invention Is Profitably Marketable - 360 pages of resources, tips and methods to help you see if your idea is worth pursuing.

"My book is down-to-earth with no punches pulled and no gushing encouragements," says White. "This book tells inventors right up front what steps to take to avoid spending thousands on a useless invention idea." Will It Sell? is designed as the first book inventors should read to figure out what they should do, where they can get help, and how to avoid those costly pitfalls that inventors face.

For instance, White says one reason many people don't pursue their great ideas is they believe they must spend thousands of dollars on a patent first. "Successful inventors follow the steps in this book to inexpensively determine whether their invention will be profitable," White says. The key, he claims, is taking very low-cost, but appropriate steps to protect the invention along the way. "Experienced inventors are often making a profit selling their products before they pay for a full patent application."

White, in fact, is taking his own advice in developing an invention of his own - the Curlique Pendant Positioner, which invisibly helps keep necklace clasps, pendants and charms in place. The necklace clasp stays behind the neck instead of creeping around to the front. Following the steps in the book thus far, White has been able to test market his product for less than $3,000.

Preface

This book quickly covers how I believe you should approach most invention ideas to evaluate their potential profitability in the marketplace. The emphasis is on FREE and inexpensive steps you can take yourself. The major point is that the marketplace does not reward IDEAS, it rewards SATISFYING THE PEOPLE IN THE MARKETPLACE.

Almost everybody has ideas from time to time that they think just might be big winners if only they had the money for a patent. You DON’T need the money for a patent for the right idea selling the product will supply the money for the patent. For even better ideas (but few and far between), you may very well be able to get someone else to pay the money for getting the patent.

Proper weeding of your idea patch before you invest a lot of time and money (not to mention ego) will nearly always give you a far greater chance of success than the most insightful toiling on the first (or only?) idea you have. In fact, the book points out that proper weeding may narrow you down to only one out of a hundred of your invention ideas. Furthermore, it needn’t even be your idea the electric light bulb was not Thomas Edison’s idea, he (and a staff of at least 10 and maybe as many as 60) merely pushed through experiment after experiment till they succeeded in creating a commercially viable light bulb.

If the methods preached in this book are put into practice by the majority of inventors I fully expect the number of patent applications filed annually in the U.S. to drop by anywhere from 50,000-100,000 over the next 3 years. That will be a drop of 19-39% making the number of filings each year about 150,000 and may well put a fair number of patent attorneys out of work. Even though the total number of patents issued would also drop by those percents I would expect the number of worthwhile patents, the ones that make money, to dramatically increase. Perhaps as much as ten times the current level. That would mean the number of profitable patents would go from about 4,500 a year to maybe 50,000.

On the other hand, what if this book showed thousands (maybe even millions) of people who have invention "ideas" each year the way to get their invention to market safely and without too much expense? What if each inventor that now concentrates on 1 idea that never goes anywhere learned to generate 300 ideas a year of which 3 were successfully taken to market? Maybe we should be demanding the training of more patent attorneys to handle the glut of patent applications as valuable patent filings increase to 350,000 or more a year. How do you get your share of that action?

Chapter 2 -- What is a Patentable Invention?

If you have ever perused the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) site (http://www.uspto.gov) and/or the IBM Intellectual Property Network site (http://www.patents.ibm.com), you will quickly see that many patents are neither great ideas nor solutions to any real problem.

Patents are simply granted to people who (claim to)

"invent or discover any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof,"

to quote the essence of the U.S. statute governing patents. Per the Constitution of the United States (Article I, Section 8, item 8) the inventor secures, for a limited time, the exclusive right to their discovery. The Patent Office examiners only verify that the description and claims, AS DESCRIBED by their inventors or patent attorneys, are new, unique, and not obvious to the Patent Office.

The examiners DO NOT verify that an invention works or that it can ever be, or never has been, built. They try only to correctly verify that the invention is patentable and has not been patented [in the U.S.] before and their results have been overturned on more than one occasion.

This is despite the fact that, per the USPTO:

"The patent law specifies that the subject matter must be ‘useful.’ The term ‘useful’ in this connection refers to the condition that the subject matter has a useful purpose and also includes operativeness, that is, a machine which will not operate to perform the intended purpose would not be called useful, and therefore would not be granted a patent."

You may also have noted that there was nothing about "ideas" in the above quotes. That is because the patent office does not grant patents for "mere ideas or suggestions." The rules also require that the patent be explicit enough so that anyone "ordinarily skilled in the art" can apply what they learn in the patent to make the invention and make it work successfully.

I’d like to patent the idea to end war, the idea to end hunger, the idea to end poverty, the idea of an anti-gravity platform, the idea of an anti-gravity belt (the idea of an anti-gravity rug is already taken because I saw it in a comic book more than a year ago). The trouble is, I just don’t know how to (or how to describe how to) reduce any of those ideas to practice.

What really happens is that the USPTO (with one exception) errs on the side of the claimant when granting a patent. They do not have the resources or the expertise to determine if all claims made are in fact correct. Occasionally, an application will be rejected if the patent examiner believes the invention won’t work; but the bottom line is that the objection will be removed if the "inventor" simply asserts, "I made one (or I tried it) and it worked" or "I’ve (self-) studied X extensively and I believe it will work."

The vast majority of granted invalid claim patents expire without any protest because there is no point in wasting time, energy, and money proving the claimant a fool.

When a new inventor comes up with something similar that does work and that does have commercial potential, then, and only then, is the invalid claim patent likely to be challenged. This can happen either because the USPTO wholly or partially denies the claims in the new patent application, or because the invalid-claims patent’s inventor claims infringement. If the invalid-claims patent inventor cannot prove to the court that their "invention" works (or that they have been and still are "diligently pursuing" the development of their invention), their patent will generally be declared invalid.

Yes, the invalid-claim claimant pays twice, once to get the (invalid) patent, and once to defend it while it is being declared invalid. The system works well and even I can’t think of a better one. To do things otherwise might mean that any inventor, whether independent like you or part of a huge corporation, could "invent" something without knowing whether it would work or not. Then the U.S. taxpayer would foot the bill for the USPTO to do the R & D to build the invention and test it.

What was that one exception to the USPTO erring on the side of the claimant? If you claim perpetual motion as part of your invention, and assert that it works after your patent is denied, the USPTO will probably require that you provide a working version of your invention for them to examine. Hmm... How many anti-gravity devices have been patented?

Shouldn’t the USPTO be more diligent and precise? Well, they could be if the U.S. Congress didn’t keep STEALING the money that inventors (and the firms that support them) pay in fees for the Patent Office to process applications. In the past few years Congress has taken over $100 million this way and it may be over $200 million by the time you read this.

If you, as an individual or small business, pay the fees for a patent application, are granted a patent, and keep it in force for 20 years, you’ll pay about $4,000 in fees to the USPTO. A large company would pay about twice that.

You also must realize that U.S. patent examiners (of which there are only somewhere between 2100 and 2500) virtually never spend more than about 80 hours and the average is less than 20 hours on your patent. Patent applications in some classes routinely get less than 10 hours of examination. This is despite the fact that it will probably take close to 2 years for you to get your patent. In fact, patent examiners have strict processing quotas that they are expected to meet. They also get bonuses if they exceed the quotas. I think you get the picture. However, you actually get a hell of a lot of value for your money despite Congress’ sticky paws and the quota gun the examiners are under.

Unfortunately, on rare occasions, the issues must be decided by a court and AT THE INVENTOR’S (YOUR) EXPENSE. The vociferousness of the few that fall into this category (aided and abetted by the "news" hungry media) tends to exaggerate what is in reality only a very minor problem.

An illustrative example of patentability versus commercial viability: A friend I met at a local inventors club meeting said he had a great idea for a toilet seat lifter and was fairly certain that none existed on the market and therefore his invention should be patentable and ultimately successful.

We all know that toilet seats being left up (or down) when they shouldn’t be is part of the (legendary?/ongoing?) battle of the sexes. I searched the IBM Intellectual Property Network (formerly, and probably more aptly, named the IBM Patent Server) looking for the strings "toilet" and "seat" and "lift" in titles only. There were 66 toilet seat lifting inventions that contained those strings in the patent title (this is just since 1971 which is the year the online searchable database begins). There were 4,644 patents that might also be relevant because they contained the word "toilet" in the title.

I also used the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site to find the U.S. Classification for Toilet Seat Lifters and found it was "CLASS 4, BATHS, CLOSETS, SINKS, AND SPITTOONS" subclass "246.1 OPENER OR CLOSER FOR A CLOSET SEAT OR LID." (How to do this search will be described later.) A search for "CCL/4/246*" yielded 157 patents since 1976 in the U.S. that contained the relevant class/subclass identification.

I also did a quick search on the Internet for web pages with the words "toilet" and "seat" and "lifter" in them. There were more than a dozen good solid hits. I have contacted all that I could, told them I was writing this book and that their information would help other inventors like themselves, and asked each to provide me with some info on what it cost them to get their patent, get their invention to market, and about how long it took them to recover their expenses. I promised not to divulge anything but aggregate data.

Only one responded and that was to say that, if I asked, he would be happy to tell me why he invented his toilet seat lifter. All sites except one appear to have gotten their patents in the last couple of years. The only one that I believe is profitable is the one that wasn’t shouting about their patent. The firm is old and established and their product sells successfully for about $1,500 in the U.S. while the new, PATENTED toilet seat lifters were selling (oops) offered for $39.95 or less. I’ll bet that the new firms will be replaced by other new firms within 5 years.

Not only has the lifting and lowering of the toilet seat been addressed in patents, many patents were expressly for inventions that solved problems with toilet seat lifters. Several dealt just with the problem of preventing the seat from slamming down (or up) if deactivation (or activation) of the lifting mechanism was too abrupt (or vigorous). These are problems my friend probably didn't even know he would encounter because he had not yet done any development.

From the preceding material you should conclude that the question is NOT whether an invention is patentable or not.

Appendix H. How to Make More Ideas

Are you a "hobby" inventor, a one-idea-wonder, a perpetual wannabe? You will be if you stick with only your one or two non-commercially viable ideas. But you don’t have to be. You can make more ideas then weed them out till you just have ones left you believe you will be able to make commercially viable inventions from. From those inventions you will need to get even more selective in choosing the ones you finally make into products. Do it once or twice with simple products and you will soon be ready to tackle bigger or more complex projects if you want to. But first, how do you generate more ideas?

Write it down. Every time you have a "problem" think about it carefully and decide if you should make a note of it. In one of the inventor clubs I go to there is an 80 year old gentleman that makes sure he carries a piece of paper and a pencil everywhere he goes. His paper gets pretty tattered and folded before it is replaced by a new piece but he is able to keep, in one place, all of his ideas.

Does he take them all to market? No. But he does select a few and move them along sometimes stopping because of existing solutions, sometimes conflicting patents, sometimes difficult or impossible technical issues, and sometimes because some testing proves it won’t sell. And yes, he does "lose" some money along the way on non-commercial ideas but the commercial successes far outweigh the losses. But he never loses the cost of a patent because he does a Provisional Application for Patent to protect his invention first then determines as quickly and as relatively inexpensively as possible the answer to the question "Will it sell?" He also has a lot of fun along the way. Sure, he has an ego but financial success stokes it far more than inept flailing.

Is he a genius? He might be but he doesn’t think so and you certainly wouldn’t guess it to talk to him. What is his secret? It’s two fold. First he has lots of ideas and weeds vigorously. Second is he follows through himself. He doesn’t tell someone he had an idea then wait for something to happen. He makes it happen. Does he tell himself how stupid he is if an idea doesn’t seem commercially viable? Not a chance. He tells himself how smart he was to determine the commercial viability before wasting a lot of money and without getting his ego all tangled up in it.