When Lightening Strikes and your mind is electrified with that great invention, what should you do first?
Not always so graphically, but this question is often raised during my workshops and inventor organization visits across the country. In a nutshell, this is the advice I usually offer.
First step, when that lightening strikes: take good notes.
No, not in a letter addressed to yourself. That only works in songs like “Rikki, don’t lose that number.” Instead, jot it down along with a sketch in an inventors’ notebook – - nothing fancy, just a dime store composition notebook with fixed pages. Follow-up with regular updates on your concept development. Use ink, date the entries, number the pages and occasionally invite someone who can understand your invention to read, sign, and date your notes. BTW, this witness should not be someone who would benefit from your invention if he or she ever had to testify on your behalf in a Court proceeding. Keeping a journal takes little effort but lots of discipline, and should be started early in the process, even before the smoke from the lightning bolt clears the air.
Second step: validating your invention takes considerable effort. It requires research and is certain to tie up a lot of weekends. Your objective is to figure out if your invention is really new – - or if you’ve simply been clueless to what’s going on in the rest of the world. You also have to figure out if your invention has potential in the marketplace. For example, you need to know what people already are using to address the same problem or obtain the same benefits. You need to get your mind around the marketplace competition. I recommend inventors split their efforts between market research and patent searching. While most inventors are quite familiar with typical marketplaces (brick ‘n mortar as well as web-based), relatively few have stepped into the world of patent documents.
Patent searching is an art, and a full time vocation for a vast number of professionals. It’s also something that most anyone can tackle with a bit of diligence and modest computer skills. It may surprise many of you that one of the easiest places to begin patent searching is with the good old Google® search engine. Amazingly, it differs little from any other Google® search. In the Google® listing of services and products, choose PATENT SEARCH. Here’s a quick example. Let’s say I’ve invented a combination stapler and laser pointer. Hey, that’s gotta be new! I simply enter the terms: > > stapler laser pointer < < and see what comes up. Uh oh. Not so new after all. Practice on the basics, then move on to the “advanced” search and follow the engine search tips. Read some patent documents to see how they’re written. Note that the patents discovered in your search almost always refer to other patents that were cited in the initial examination…and to later issued patents where the discovered patents were cited in the examination of subsequent applications. Interestingly, the Google® engine includes nearly all US Patents back to 1790 and they are term-searchable.
The US Patent and Trademark Office home page can lead you to the USPTO patent search pages. There, it’s fairly easy to search US Patents and Published Patent Applications by a wide range of searchable fields from document text to inventor name, technology category classification and more. Try it out. Lot’s of other sites to discuss. Get back to this blog with your input or questions and let’s yakaboutit!
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About Don Kelly (in his words): Hi…I’m Don Kelly, patent agent, certified licensing professional…and an ardent fan of Yakaboutit. I live at www.patentagentplus.com …and can always be tapped for some free advice…for what it’s worth 
) Above are some tips for inventors with great ideas. Please let me know what you think…especially if you have informative comments or additions. I’d like to make this a highly interactive, informative blog…but not so complex that it defies understanding. Feedback on this sample would be most enlightening. And don’t pull any punches. I’ve been around so long those punches simply add to my addled nature.
