I have an idea for a bushcraft product. It?s very simple and I?m surprised no one else has done it [snip] Has anyone got any real life experience in prototyping or turning an idea into a product?
Yes, I've had some experience. Others have mentioned non-disclosure agreements, that's good advice if you plan on protecting your idea somehow. Make sure that anyone to whom you reveal the idea has signed such an agreement first. If you can't find a suitable form of words using Google then you'd better stop now because you aren't up for the rest of it! Don't try to word it yourself, you might miss out something important or even say something that is read in a way you didn't intend. Even lawyers get caught like that sometimes, and don't even mention locking blades around here...
People have talked about patents but they haven't given much detail about the patent process. I have experience of that too and it's not exactly fun. As has been said a patent can be of dubious value although it might be worth getting a patent if you wanted to wave it under the nose of a potential backer such as a venture capital company. (I have experience of venture capital companies. You need one like you need an extra hole in your head.
) One problem with patents is that they're long-winded and expensive (maybe that's two problems) and apart from European Patents you really need separate patents for each country (and that means separate patent clerks, fees, applications, rules, etc. etc.). One patent might not be enough, very often products develop, and suddenly the new product isn't covered by the old patent and you're off to the cleaners again. When you patent an invention the UK Patent Office MUST publish it. So if you only patent it in one country it's a free-for-all in the rest of the world because there are people out there reading all the patents published just to steal the ideas. There are also people reading the patent applications who will then write to all the applicants and offer to take their ideas further on their behalf. For a fee, of course. They are usually crooks, ignore them.
Nobody seems to have mentioned copyright. You get copyright automatically in law whenever you produce an original work. It doesn't really matter what that work is, it can be a drawing, text, a model, whatever. One way of protecting your idea is to produce a sketch and/or description, sign it and date it and seal it into and envelope, and mail it to yourself by recorded delivery. Then DO NOT open it, but take it to a bank, a solicitor, a notary, or some suitably upstanding service provider of that sort for safe keeping. There will probably be a charge for that. The idea of this is to be able to prove that it was your idea at whatever date was on the Royal Mail date stamp on the envelope. If anybody pinches the idea you can at least prove you thought of it first. You might want to take it to the Post Office instead of just putting it in the post box, to ask them to do a nice legible date stamp for you. You don't need to draw a letter C in a circle or anything like that, that's nonsense. You just need to be able to prove the date. Copyright can cover you more or less world wide and it's more or less free until you decide to take somebody to task over it. Then you'll probably wish you'd never been born, never mind thought of the idea in the first place. Make no mistake, any legal action at all is usually a lose-lose situation.
I think you said you can't believe that nobody else has thought of it. How do you know? Maybe someone has. Maybe they're in the same position as you. Maybe they're just waiting for you to start making them and then they'll blackmail you. One of the things about patents is that publication of the idea before the date that the patent _application_ is made automatically invalidates the patent. That's one reason why you need a non-disclosure agreement, because if there is such an agreement with somebody when you tell that somebody (not any other somebody) about your idea then it isn't treated as being published. The Patent Office uses a very broad definition of the word 'published'. The case history of the Bic Biro is used to illustrate this point in first year patent law lectures. The inventor gave one prototype biro to a friend. Published. No patent for Mr. Bic. Some friend he turned out to be.
Part of the procedure for granting a patent is a "search". In the UK the Patent Office does this, and you have to pay fees for it. If they find something which they think may affect your ability to get a patent they'll tell you about it. They'll tell you if they think it's what the patent agents call a "straight knockout" -- in which case there is "prior art" and you can forget the patent unless you can re-phrase your claims to avoid it -- or if perhaps some part of your invention has something in common with parts of the other patent, in which case you'll have the opportunity to modify your claims. You can also withdraw the application before publication so nobody gets to see it. The UK Patent Office is pretty good to private individuals in my experience. I think they'll often try hard to help someone who is obviously going to be unfamiliar with their processes. They produce a few very useful information packs and what you need to do is all very clearly set out. I have no personal experience of other patent offices, only patent agents and they're, well, mixed.
My understanding of patents in the US is that they're relatively easier to get than UK patents and they tend to be relatively less well thought of. UK patents are treated with some reverence; US patents are there to be challenged in the courts at least, or possibly gazumped. You don't want to get involved in any of that.
One way of making sure that nobody else can patent your idea is to publish it. Sounds daft, but very often companies publish their new product ideas in Outlandish Magazine so that (a) nobody else can patent it and they don't have to but (b) nobody much gets to hear about it because Outlandish Magazine has a circulation list a bit like the one in "Conspiracy Theory". A very old friend of mine was a patent agent for British Leyland (that's how long ago it was
), and one of his jobs there was to read all kinds of weird (no, not that sort of weird
) magazines to look for things like that. Once he got a respectable sum of money from a car magazine when he rang them to tell them what he'd found about a new BMW model name in "Ferret Catcher's Weekly". Well that's the name of the mag he said he found it in, he never would tell me what it really was.
But it really was the new BMW model name that was still under wraps, and they really did publish it like that so nobody else could use it, and he got a scoop.
Not exactly finally, but lastly for now, someone also said that the good idea is one percent of the work. I'd go a bit further than that. It's a lot less than one percent. If you want to give it a run for its money and make some money out of it it's going to take a lot of time, effort and heartache. And money. Unless you plan to take this very seriously then the best thing is not to worry about anybody ripping the idea off and just be philosophical about it when they do. Which, if it's really a good idea, and it's really true that nobody else has thought of it, they will. The ultimate accolade is probably when the Chinese start to make forgeries.
