jim hardy said:
Congratulations Yungman ! You wrote it yourself ?
i wrote one but sent it to a patent lawyer. $ ten thousand and a couple years later it came back approved, US 7177383.
Wishing you good luck and continued success !
old jim
Thanks.
Yes, I wrote it myself. I always curious on the patent law, and I feel it's always an advantage to learn how to write it. I really spent the last half a year, quit studying electronics and study how to write a patent application. It is quite tricky, the most important part is the "Claims" of the patent, it is almost like learning how to write a computer programming language. There are words that have more meaning than just English. It is like "IF, THEN, ELSE", "CASE" etc. And you have to follow certain progression. You name names like you define variables etc. and address accordingly. It was really kind of fun writing it. Learning how to convey the concept without being specific so it is hard for people to modify so the patent won't cover it.
It makes a big difference in the cost. Like you said, it can easily be $10K not even including the filing fee. For me, so far I paid $530 filing fee. This include the patent search by the USPTO, examine to make sure it is "unobvious", that nobody has a patent on it. I will get a feedback on the basic format of my application in a week or two to make sure the application pass the initial format or anything obvious. Then it will be a waiting period of a year for the examiner to do the patent search. Then if I am lucky enough that they approve the patent application, then I would have to pay the final patent filing fee of about $1200. If that happens and I pay the money, then the patent will be in pending.
Hopefully it would be a lot easier if I write another patent. This one is more major, but I have another simple guitar effect circuit that I am slowly doing patent search that I might consider submitting after I search through the existing patents. The patent search is very tedious, that's the boring part.
I think knowing how to write a patent is very important for an inventor. It's up to whether you believe me or not. One evening in 1987, me and stepson was talking about suitcase. We were just brain storming how to make it better. I came up with the idea putting two wheels one on each side on the broad side. Then have a retractable handle in the middle of the bottom of the suitcase. I believe we were a few years ahead of time before this kind of suitcase became popular. The difference was in my idea, the two wheels were on the broad side so it is more stable. The existing suitcase mostly has the two wheels on the narrow side. We laughed it off. I don't know what happened if we pursue this. I was very into real estate at the time and working full time, so I wasn't really taking it serious. BUT if this happen that I have an idea like this, I would write a patent application and see what happen as it's only $530 to file one if I write it myself.
You seen those gripping sticks for old people? you use it for grabbing stuff high shelf, picking up things on the floor if you cannot bend down. My brother came up with a cane with the gripper, he actually manufactured 5000 of it and shipped to US in 1984. I invested into it. But same situation happened. I was at the beginning of my career and I was busy at work. My brother was in Hong Kong. We depended one sales person to sell to the pharmacy store. He did not do a good job and the business failed. Nobody thought about applying for a patent. Now the gripping stick and stuffs are so popular.
I really advice any inventor should learn how to write a patent application. You never know where the little joking ideas end up. If one of the two I described pent out, I'll be a lot better off. You never know what can be money making, it is easy to Monday morning quarter backing. Bottom line, I did not pursue, it's no body's fault, it's not even about luck, I did not pursue them and I have no one to blame.
. I am trying to get back to studying, I review some of my notes on EM so I can pick up where I left off. It looks foreign to me...just from a year or so ago...it's my own hand writing
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