I have found one thing common among most inventors. Most are paying thousands for services they don’t need if they want a company to license their product. All invention filing companies push for patent search, provisional patent filing, full patent filing, market analysis report, CAD drawing. Why? Because you have to pay for these things and they provide a service doing just that.

Here are some things those sites forgot to tell you.

You can do a patent search yourself using the patent office website or Google’s new patent search. The downside is that if you don’t find anything listed, it doesn’t mean a provisional patent hasn’t been filed. You just can’t see it. You can spend all your money on a patent only to find out someone else has a lock instead. Also, you will find that when you license your idea to a company, they may want to improve your idea or modify it so that your patent no longer covers the final product. So you have to file another patent. I call this “What started as a dog ends as a cat syndrome”. The money from his original patent was wasted. I have 6 items on the market and I didn’t spend a penny on patents. The companies that licensed the ideas paid for the patents out of their pockets to protect their investment. The patent covers the actual product they are producing.

A provisional patent is cheaper, but starts a 1-year clock. If you don’t get licensed in that year, you MUST apply for a full patent or your idea will be open to anyone else who applies for a patent. Once the full patent starts, you will spend thousands of dollars to complete it. Do you have the resources to pay for a full patent? You are also going to wait at least a year or more before the patent is issued.

Full patents are great if you are a large company and can spend millions of dollars defending your patent. The average person can’t afford to take on a company the size of Disney or Mattel to fight knockoffs. You will lose any profit you have made and be in shortly for years. If you don’t think that’s true, check out all the imitation patent items on the shelf right now.

A market analysis is a waste of money unless you plan to produce and sell the item yourself. If you do one today and find a company that will license your idea, they will do their own market analysis and not take your word for it. So, you are paying for something that they will do anyway. In the last 5 years, only one company asked me if I had done a market analysis on that product idea. I asked if they needed me to make one. He said no, they would do their thing.

Also, how long is your market analysis good for? If it’s been a year since you got one and you still haven’t found a company to produce your product, is your market analysis still valid? Can you afford to get one every 6 months or yearly?

You don’t always need CAD drawings or some other technical engineering drawing to convey a point. If you’re doing electronic circuitry or something extremely high tech, it would probably be advisable. If you’re producing a low-tech item or a board game, you don’t have to be so technical. All my drawings are two-dimensional. They look professional, get the point across, are in color, and have concise explanations describing the item’s function and benefits.

More and more companies are open to seeking external ideas from Inventors. They see the value in having someone outside the company look at their line and see if they can think of something that fits. I approach companies through a confidentiality agreement. Once each of us signs the agreement, I will submit my idea for your review. If they are interested, we will discuss royalty and licensing terms.

Since I don’t have to wait for a patent, I can start approaching companies right away. This saves me a year or more of waiting to get started. Another point to consider is that if you approach a company with your patented idea, they will typically offer you 3%-5% royalties based on sales. If you approach them with the same idea and it’s not patented, they’ll offer you a 3%-5% royalty. So you’re saving the cost of the patent and when you get your first royalty check it’s a profit, not something you’re using to recoup the money you spent on the patent.