Just letting the patent office know about it can prevent someone from stealing your idea. Even your idea can't have been known about or considered something that would need to be done anyway. I have read that it's best to mail yourself a registered letter with your idea in it and also have a notary stamp and date your letter. This gives you absolute proof of when you came up with the idea. Usually to copy a patent and be OK, only minor changes are needed depending on how complex it is. Many machines have several patents that work hand in hand. I know someone with a patented product and they said all they have to do to extend the patent is change it by 10% and they can do this indefinately. It is very expensive to get a patent. That's why some products are just flooded on the market to sell a whole bunch before they're copied. You have to be very careful taking your product to someone who might buy the rights to it or manufacture it. They could steal your idea. Usually manufacturers won't be interested in buying your invention unless you already have the patent. Like the intermittent wipers and the rising rate suspension used on dirt bikes. The inventors won in court on these but paid a fortune in legal fees. They did come out ahead in the end. Polaroid sued Kodak over the instant camera and won millions and all Kodak instant cameras became obsolete. Years ago my dad used to have fold up ramps that he mounted on the tailgate of the work trucks for loading smaller machines. These were patented. The manufacturer with the patent stopped making them and someone else started to make a very similar product. The original manufacturer found out and all that happened was the copycat ramps had to be discontinued. No money was paid to the patent holder. Taiwan doesn't recognize patents and maybe none of China does. That's why everything that's copied comes from there. Sometimes it is best to just market you product to death and hope to sell a whole bunch of units before they are copied. A lot of people mistake the term "Patent Pending" for a patent. It is not a patent. It means they are in the process of applying for a patent and are pending the results of a patent search. It is supposed to be illegal to put "Patent Pending" on a product that isn't in the process of getting a patent but I'm sure it is done all the time. Patents can take up to 3 years to finalize and someone could come up with a similar product in that time and sell it. I'm not trying to discourage you. I invented a tool for use on golf courses and thought about patenting it. It got rave reviews but would have been very expensive and time consuming to patent it. A lawyer who actually built his own golf course was so impressed with it that he wanted to mass produce it. He was good friends with my dad for several years. Only problem was he passed away unexpectedly and I never got my working model back. I could make another one and I think about it all the time. It would have cost around $100 and there are thousands of golf courses that could have purchased one or more of the tools. It was superior to everything else on the market. Maybe I should make another one. Good luck with your invention. All the red tape and cost is the real pain in the azz. Dave
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Today's Featured Article - Field Modifications (Sins of the Farmer) - by Staff. Picture a new Chevrolet driving down the street without it's grill, right fender and trunk lid. Imagine a crude hole made in the hood to accommodate a new taller air cleaner, the fender wells cut away to make way for larger tires, and half of a sliding glass door used to replace the windshield. Top that off with an old set of '36 Ford headlight shells bolted to the hood. Pretty unlikely for a car... but for a tractor, this is pretty normal. It seems that more often than not they a
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