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Author Topic: Protect yourself while trying to develop/market a tool  (Read 5846 times)

Offline HaroldCR - AKA Fla.-Deadheader

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Protect yourself while trying to develop/market a tool
« on: March 10, 2019, 10:10:49 AM »
As the title says, how does one go about this? We have designed an ingenious and simple tool and want to receive royalties, IF possible, and have someone make and market this tool.

Any and all input is accepted. Thanks

Offline furu

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Re: Protect yourself while trying to develop/market a tool
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2019, 12:10:23 PM »
Patent the device. 
Sell the development rights to a company that is willing  to do as you say. 
First step:  Talk to a patent attorney.
Integrity is not just doing the right thing.
Integrity is not just doing the right thing when no one is looking.
Integrity is doing the right thing when no one else will ever even know.

Offline HaroldCR - AKA Fla.-Deadheader

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Re: Protect yourself while trying to develop/market a tool
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2019, 01:43:09 PM »
Patents are expensive and can be bypassed by China, etc. All I want to do is get a company interested and make a small royalty per piece produced.

Offline furu

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Re: Protect yourself while trying to develop/market a tool
« Reply #3 on: March 10, 2019, 02:48:55 PM »
Any one can bypass a patent if they violate the law and international agreements.  China or a US company.   

Getting a company to sell with royalties a unique and great device won't happen in my opinion.  At least for long.
If you don't have a patent then the company that you license to sell your device will get a patent on it for themselves and then cut you out of the equation in a completely legal maneuver. (It happens more than you would think, copyrights have the problem as well)
Your so called agreement for royalties will not be enforceable as you won't hold the rights to the device, they will.  On top of that I don't think any company would sign a license agreement with you without a patent as they would tool up for the production and then another company would start building the same thing.

Don't know what expensive is to you but many little inventors get patents and they are not rich and some of them hold a lot of patents.

I have no idea if the below statement is accurate but a quick search on line yielded the following:

The basic filing fee for a design patent application is $760 for a large entity. A small entity's fee is $380, while a micro-entity's fee is $190. If you hire a patent lawyer to assist with preparing documents and filing the design patent application, the cost could be around $1,500-$3,000.
Integrity is not just doing the right thing.
Integrity is not just doing the right thing when no one is looking.
Integrity is doing the right thing when no one else will ever even know.

Online Ox

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Re: Protect yourself while trying to develop/market a tool
« Reply #4 on: March 10, 2019, 03:46:21 PM »
Are you comfortable with sharing what this tool is for?  Or what industry it will serve?  Maybe with that knowledge a few more of us can lay out some more ideas.

I think what furu is saying sounds very sensible and all-encompassing.  I'm sure this sage advice probably works across all fields and industries.

I hope you can get what you're after.  It sounds kind of exciting.
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Offline mike p

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Re: Protect yourself while trying to develop/market a tool
« Reply #5 on: March 18, 2019, 06:21:57 PM »
1981I was working for a body shop in Oklahoma City. I welded up a little tool that would hold the door open secured so they were solid without scratching anything.one of the guys that I work with wanted one so you asked me to show it to the Mac Tool Man see if they had anything available in the catalog like it. no he said never seen nothing like that before ,ask me if I was going to patent it I said I don't know I hadn't really thought about it three months later he had professionally manufactured tool look ed a lot like mine for sale on the truck for 36 bucks. so if you got something get a patent. my great-grandfather invented a tool for the railroad and he got an attorney to help him get the patent he made the mistake of not paying the man up front so they didn't have any real contract and the attorney wound up with the patent and all the proceeds
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