DON`T File a Patent!

Transcription

DON’T File a Patent!
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Foreword
I work with Patent Attorneys on a daily basis, leveraging my experience
writing and enforcing patents. Taking a unique idea and turning it into a
real product is what the patent system is supposed to encourage. So when
a successful inventor writes an open letter to the whole world, and says
“DON’T File a Patent!” I pay attention, and so should you.
John D. Smith is an inventor who clearly isn’t motivated by the U.S.
patent system. For John, the Patent Office symbolizes a series of broken
promises. Until researching his book, John was probably largely ignorant
of the patent office bureaucracy that most Patent Attorneys take for
granted. John knows what he created, and knows how and why. I’ve
written before that attorneys need to be more acutely aware of how the
practice of law actually affects their clients, especially when things don’t
go as planned. This book offers a rare look at exactly that.
Take advantage of John’s experience to understand what your client will
be going through if your mission to obtain a patent fails. Read his
reaction to the section 103(a) USPTO form paragraph. Recognize his
frustration with an examiner combining 6 different prior art
references to reconstruct John’s invention with the benefit of hindsight,
with him powerless to do anything about it.
Many Patent Attorneys convince clients to file patent applications to
“protect” their products. This “protection” is very misleading, and John
has figured that out. This book discusses the fact that patents are, at their
core, an invitation to file a lawsuit. He writes for the benefit of other
inventors, how it is the inventor’s responsibility to enforce his patent.
Read about John’s experience with Trademark litigation. Take note of
how familiar he is with the delay and expense of the legal system.
Realize the difficulty that collecting judgments presents to your clients
who had to dip into their own pocket in the first place.
Read the book, and become a better lawyer because of it.
Patrick Anderson,
Former Patent Attorney & Director, Patent Calls
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The Patent Office wants your money, not your invention.
The Smith Press
Seattle Orlando Phoenix Estero Chicago
Written & Published by John D. Smith
Printed in the United States of America
www.dontfileapatent.com
Editor: Ms. Lark Kruse
Third Printing—May, 2013
Copyright © November 23, 2010 by John D. Smith. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United
States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or
distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9822581-3-2
ISBN-10 : 0-9822581-3-5
Library of Congress Copyright Registration Number: TX 7-270-570
Cover Illustration: John D. Smith
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Dedicated to John D. & Mary F. Smith
The best parents a young man could ever hope for
Beati quorum via integra est
From Psalm 119:1
Translated as: “Blessed are those who go the way of integrity”
As featured in the song “Always with you,” by Libera
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I want to thank Patent Examiner Miss E.P.
of the United States Patent & Trademark Office for inspiring
me to write this. Without her three absurd Office Action
rejections, this book would not have been possible.
I’d also like to thank the following people for their
contributions:
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My Assistant Lark Kruse for her great editing, her funny
Chapter 11 cartoon and the wonderful feedback she provides on
a daily basis.
My awesome office support staff of Edison, Katie, Max, Rocco,
Rosie & Charlie. You are the best!
Author Al Ries for permission to excerpt his “Positioning: The
Battle for Your Mind” book in Chapter 17.
Patent Attorney Patrick Anderson for his Foreword on Page 3.
Author Steve Bloom for all his book knowledge and
encouragement. As he told me, “I hate to write, but I love to
have written.” I totally agree.
Fiction Authors Andrew Vachss, David Morrell and Michael
Connelly, as well as Vegas Ventriloquist Terry Fator. The
gracious way each of you interacts with your fans is an
inspiration.
Fellow St. John’s Military Academy ‘86 classmate and New
York City Playwright Adam Rapp. With my book, SJMA has
at least two published authors.
I’d also like to give credit to the invention of The Smith Press.
This was the first ever printing press, created in 1821 by a great
guy named Smith. Without his invention, this book would not
have been published.
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Table of Contents
PART 1:
10 Reasons not to file a Patent on your invention
Introduction
Chapter 1:
Author Introduction and Background
10 Reasons not to file a Patent on your invention
USPTO Patent Examiner Miss E.P.’s 3rd Office Action
Rejection & the 6 "prior art" patents that she combines to
say that Storm Stoppers is “obvious” and not patentable
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PART 2:
Tips & strategies to encourage you to
manufacture and sell your invention yourself
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Chapter 8:
Chapter 9:
Chapter 10:
Chapter 11:
Chapter 12:
Chapter 14:
Chapter 15:
Chapter 16:
Chapter 17:
Chapter 18:
Chapter 19:
Chapter 20:
Chapter 21:
Chapter 22:
Chapter 23:
Chapter 24:
Chapter 25:
Stay out of trouble so you don’t miss any opportunities
Can your invention be successful?
Should you license your invention to another company?
The 4 steps of creating a successful invention
How to manufacture your product yourself
Be in business to sell your product, not your company
YAGOTTAWANNA
Be a Persistent S.O.B.
Don’t Sue Copycat Competitors
Attorneys are like Pac-Man
“Badass” Federal Judgments are impossible to collect
Find a good attorney at a reasonable price
Get free support from your local SBDC
Protect your invention without a patent
Position your product as first in your customer’s mind
Build a great website for under $2,500
12 ways to market your product for under $1,000
11 Ways to keep your operating costs low
Don’t quit your job
Don’t spend your money on things you don’t need
Position your invention & your company to the Media
Stand out in your mailings to the Media
Don’t try to keep up with the Kardashians
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Conclusion
Live a Good Life
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211-228
Appendixes
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Author Introduction and Background
My name is John D. Smith and I’m a
successful inventor who has made
millions of dollars in revenue with my
Storm Stoppers® The Plywood
Alternative® Hurricane Window
Protection Invention.
I invented Storm Stoppers as an
alternative to plywood in 2004 after several hurricanes hit Florida.
Since then, I have sold my product to over 7,000 homeowners in a
dozen states and the Caribbean. Over the last 8 years, combined
retail and wholesale sales have exceeded $10 million. Storm
Stoppers have protected hundreds of homes in six major
hurricanes, including Hurricane Wilma in 2005, Hurricane Ike in
2008 and Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy in 2012, and have been
featured in almost 100 TV and newspaper stories. Despite the
innovation and commercial success of my invention, Storm
Stoppers is not patented and never will be.
My first patented invention was Collegiate Wheel Covers
In 1996, I invented collegiate wheel covers and in 1999, I invented
collegiate fan waves. Collegiate wheel covers were made of PVC
plastic with colorful, officially licensed college logos screen
printed thereon. They fastened to car, truck, van and golf car
wheels with 3M Dual Lock fasteners. Collegiate fan waves were a
hand powered cooling fan made of die cut, white corrugated
plastic.
My former Patent Attorney said the only way to “protect” my
wheel cover invention was to file a Utility Patent Application on it.
In 1997, I filed my first patent application on my collegiate wheel
cover invention. In 1999, my first patent issued (#5,931,543).
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That same year, I improved this product and filed a second patent
application known as a Continuation in Part (CIP), which issued
shortly thereafter in 2001 (#6,309,027). My collegiate wheel cover
invention never was very profitable and I stopped doing business
in 2004.
New storm protection invention
On September 10 of 2004, I invented Storm Stoppers. I combined
the 3M Dual Lock fasteners from the wheel covers and the
corrugated plastic from the fan waves to create a new product for
hurricane window protection. In 2005, I filed a Utility Patent
Application on my Storm Stoppers invention. Through June of
2010, I went through three expensive USPTO Office Action
rejections. Each Office Action rejection cost me thousands of
dollars in legal fees, as well as a lot of time. The Patent Examiner
rejected my Storm Stoppers patent application all three times.
The Patent Examiner cites dissimilar “prior art”
In each of these three Office Action rejections, the Patent
Examiner used hindsight reconstruction to combine the patent
claims from six “prior art” patents to demonstrate that, in her
opinion, Storm Stoppers is “an obvious improvement” over these
six prior art patents. I disagree. Although one of the six patents is
for the 3M Dual Lock Fasteners used in Storm Stoppers, the other
five patents are dissimilar products. None are made of translucent
I-beam corrugated plastic, none fasten with 3M Dual Lock
Fasteners, none have been Large Missile Impact Tested to repel
windborne debris in winds up to and exceeding 129 mph, none use
adhesive primer to fasten to the window frames & plastic panel,
and none have had the millions of dollars in sales and commercial
success that Storm Stoppers have had. It is unclear if any of these
prior art referenced patents have even been manufactured and sold
to a single customer.
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The patent process is an illusion of protection
After having spent almost $25,000 in legal and government filing
fees on the patent application and Office Action rejection
responses for Storm Stoppers, I learned the true nature of the
Patent Office and the patent process. The patent process is an
illusion of protection that takes inventors’ hard earned money and
gives them nothing in return. The Patent Office encourages
inventors to spend thousands of dollars in government filing fees
and legal fees, only to reject all their patent application’s claims in
the first Office Action. To continue the process, the inventor has
to re-submit his application again and again, each time paying
thousands in legal fees. Frequently, the inventor is forced to
abandon his patent application, either out of frustration, or because
he or she runs out of money.
If an inventor perseveres and gets a patent, there is no real
protection. If you own a patent and are being ripped off by a
copycat, it is up to you to enforce it. The Patent Office does
nothing. Filing a patent infringement lawsuit against a copycat
competitor costs an average of $2 million dollars or more. In my
experience, inventors should focus on manufacturing and selling
their products and making their brand first in the mind of the
customer, not spending thousands of dollars on a worthless piece
of paper.
DON’T File a Patent! is the first and only book that describes the
expense and ineffective “protection” of the process of filing a
patent on your invention. Many similar books on the subject
encourage an inventor to spend thousands of dollars on a patent
before trying to market their product.
Most so called experts in the field of invention seem to be Patent
Attorneys and those that encourage inventors to immediately
patent and license their invention, for pennies on the dollar, to an
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outside company and move on to the next invention. This
indicates that the inventor is not smart enough, or cannot learn the
necessary business skills to manufacture and sell their products
themselves. I disagree with any teaching that doesn’t encourage an
inventor to make his first invention a success before moving on to
the next. In my experience, an inventor cannot get the capital to
pursue further inventions if he first doesn’t make the first invention
a success.
DON’T File a Patent! is not targeted at big companies with the
money and resources to file for a patent and protect it with
expensive litigation. For a large corporation, a patent may be an
asset. This book is positioned for the small business or
independent inventor who may not have a lot of money, yet who
still wants to manufacture his invention and be a success. It can
also be used by Patent Attorneys as a helpful tool to better
communicate with their clients.
DON’T File a Patent! is two great books in one:
PART I details 10 reasons not to file a Patent on your invention.
These were based on my experience with Storm Stoppers and have
been independently verified by many Patent Attorneys.
PART 2 describes many useful tips and strategies to encourage
inventors to manufacture and sell their product themselves.
I share your excitement for inventing a product you are passionate
about and building a successful business. I hope that my book
inspires you to make your product yourself and form a business
around selling it. No outside company is going to make you rich
and it is rare to make a million dollars as an inventor. However,
with your invention, persistence and the tips and strategies you will
learn in this book, hopefully you will find success and fulfillment.
--John D. Smith May 6, 2013
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PART 1
10 Reasons not to file a
Patent on your invention
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Chapter 1
DON’T File a Patent! The Patent Office
wants your money, not your invention
Most inventors are encouraged to file a Utility Patent with the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to “protect” their invention
and prevent a copycat from stealing it. Having made millions of
dollars in revenue over 8 years selling my Storm Stoppers Product
and having spent almost $25,000 on Patent Attorneys and
government filing fees, I have learned that filing a Utility Patent
Application is a bad idea. Save your money.
Although I recommend you not spend your money on filing a
patent, you need to know that you only have one year from your
date of first public disclosure to file a Utility Patent Application on
your invention. If you do not file a full Utility Patent Application
on your invention within one year of the initial public disclosure,
or Provisional Patent filing date, you forever lose the “privilege” of
filing a patent application on your invention.
Types and durations of patents available
You should know that there are three types of patents available for
U.S. Inventors:
1. Utility Patents--- Utility Patents protect the function and use
of a product and are seven digits long (i.e. #5,931,543).
Utility Patents issued before 1995 last for 17 years from the
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date of issue. Utility Patents issued after 1995 last for 20
years after the earliest claimed priority date.
The earliest claimed priority date is the date you file your
Utility Patent Application or the date you filed a Provisional
Patent Application, whichever was first. For example, if you
filed a Utility Patent Application in 2001, with no Provisional
Patent filing, and the patent issues in 2007, the Utility Patent is
only valid through the year 2021. Although this would be
only 14 years from the date of issue, it is 20 years from the
earliest claimed priority date, which was 2001. If, in this same
example, you filed a Provisional Patent Application in 1999,
your patent would be valid until 2019, which is 20 years from
the earlier priority date (provisional filing) of 1999.
2. Design Patents---Design Patents protect the ornamental look
or shape of a product and last for 14 years from the date the
patent is granted. The shapes of the Coca Cola bottle and the
Statue of Liberty are examples of products protected by
Design Patents. Design Patents are 6 digits long and are
prefaced by the letter D. (i.e. D600,000)
3. Plant Patents---Plant Patents are granted to an inventor who
has discovered, and asexually reproduced, a distinct and new
variety of plant. Plant Patents last the same duration as Utility
Patents stated in #1 above.
18 months after filing, your complete patent application is
published at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s website
www.uspto.gov. This is due to the American Inventors Protection
Act of 1999, described on Page 59. After being published in this
manner, your patent application claims & trade secrets would be
visible to anyone on the Internet, such as a competitor or potential
copycat. You can elect to have your patent application “nonpublished” at no cost, provided your Patent Attorney discloses this.
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A Utility Patent is the most common type of patent
Since Utility Patents are the most comprehensive, this is the patent
type that is most commonly filed. An inventor can either file the
Utility Patent himself or hire a Patent Attorney to file it. There are
many books and software programs out that show an inventor how
to file his patent without a Patent Attorney. However, due to the
specialized language in a patent application and the technical
expertise needed, most inventors hire a Patent Attorney.
The cost varies, but it would not be unreasonable for a Utility
Patent to cost $6,000 to $20,000 or more from filing to issuance.
The true cost depends on the patent class and the number of Office
Action rejections you go through. Depending on how many Office
Action rejections you experience, it could take as few as three
years and as many as six years or more for your patent to issue.
Or, it may never issue, as happened with my patent application.
Patent Attorneys may steer inventors to file a patent
before sales potential has been shown
Any Patent Attorney who recommends that an inventor file a
patent immediately after inventing a product, but before the market
potential has been proven, is doing a disservice to the inventor.
Many inventors are working-class people with normal lives. Few
have ever had their own business before. When an inventor meets
with a Patent Attorney, the inventor rarely has much knowledge of
creating a company around selling his product. The inventor is
relying on his Patent Attorney for guidance.
In my experience, Patent Attorneys may steer inventors into filing
patents long before the inventor has even proven there is potential
for revenue and sales growth with his invention. This is a dilemma
for the Patent Attorney. If he advises an inventor not to spend his
money on a patent application, a Patent Attorney may have
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challenges paying his office salaries, business overhead or earning
a salary.
A Patent Attorney who recommends filing for a patent before you
prove sales potential is analogous to your stockbroker suggesting
you purchase a stock that he gets a big commission on, not because
purchasing it is a good investment for you.
There are some Patent Attorneys who discourage inventors from
filing patents if their product does not have commercial success
potential. In his “Should I Get a Patent?” Article, Georgia Patent
Attorney and blogger Robert Platt Bell writes:
“In order to make patenting worthwhile, there needs to be at least
a potential of $500,000 or more in royalties available.* The
reason is simple. If someone wants to copy your idea, it can cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars to enforce your Patent. If the
product has a limited market for sales and no major royalty base,
a U.S. Patent may be little more than a wall plaque.”
* Since the standard royalty paid to an inventor could be 5% of
gross sales, $500,000 in royalties paid to a licensee represents $10
million in annual sales for the licensor.
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To save inventors a lot of needless expense, here are 10 reasons I
suggest you NOT file a patent on your invention:
Reason #1 not to file a patent:
The Patent Office has a posted “patent allowance” average
of 40%, but the true allowance ratio with some classes of
products is as low as 5 to 16%
The most important reason for not filing for a patent is that the
Patent Office has a low patent allowance average. When you
compare the low number of granted patents against the hundreds of
thousands of patent applications filed each year, the overall
acceptance ratio is very low. For example, in 2009, there were
482,871 total patents filed and the posted patent allowance ratio
was only 42%. That means that the Patent Office rejected the
other 58% of patent applications.
This 42% allowance ratio in 2009 may be what the Patent Office
disclosed, but many product categories have a far lower allowance
ratio than that. There are many inventors, including me, who have
experienced repeated Office Action rejections and who could no
longer afford the legal and government filing fees. That allowance
ratio would be 0%.
In an excellent August 16, 2010 article entitled “Reducing Patent
Backlog and Prosecution Costs Using PAIR Data” on the
www.ipwatchdog.com website, Patent Attorney Mark Nowotarski
states that patent applications as a whole over the last ten years
have had an average allowance to rejection ratio of just 30%. This
means the Patent Office is rejecting 7 out of 10 patents. Mr.
Nowotarski writes that the true patent allowance percentage
depends largely on the class of goods sought to be patented.
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In his article, Mr. Nowotarski created an excellent chart showing
the different patent allowance ratios for different classes of patent
applications.
As you can see by his chart below, Electrical Connectors (Class
439) have a 1 in 2, or 50%, allowance ratio. In contrast, Molecular
Biology (Class 435/006) has a 1 in 6, or 16%, allowance ratio. At
the far right of the scale, Insurance and Finance patents have only a
1 in 20, or 5%, allowance ratio. This chart is very helpful, but the
Patent Office does not disclose a chart that covers all product
classifications. If they did, they might receive a lot fewer patent
applications and much less revenue from inventors.
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The Office Action rejection process is a moneymaker for
Patent Attorneys but a money loser for the Inventor
What is an Office Action?
An Office Action is the first official contact from the Patent Office
that an inventor receives after his patent application has been filed.
Because of their huge backlog (1.2 million as of January of 2011),
and the fact that there are less than 6,300 Patent Examiners, the
Office Action typically happens at least two years after the initial
patent application filing date.
The Office Action is a document written by a Patent Examiner
after they have examined the application. This is the first time the
inventor will see the roadblocks that the Patent Office puts in his
path to prevent him from receiving a patent.
At the beginning of the Office Action process, the Patent Examiner
makes contact with the inventor or the inventor’s Patent Attorney
via mail. In the Office Action, the Patent Examiner’s goal is to
reject the patent application. This practice is affirmed by doing a
search for “Office Action” on the General Information About
Patents page on the Patent Office’s website at:
www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/general_info_concerning_patents.jsp.
This states in part, “It is not uncommon for all of the claims to be
rejected on the first Office action by the Examiner; relatively few
applications are allowed as filed.” The Patent Examiner’s Office
Action rejection letter will typically mention that the patent
application was “obvious” and, attached to it will be several
complete patents that make up the described “prior art.” Prior art
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patents are previously issued patents that the Patent Examiner uses
to demonstrate that the inventor’s patent claims have already been
patented, and are therefore “obvious,” and un-patentable.
Your legal costs will increase with every Office Action rejection
Every time The Patent Office sends you an Office Action rejection
letter, you have to pay your attorney thousands of dollars in legal
fees for him to file a response. You must respond within three
months of the due date shown on the Office Action rejection letter.
However, for an additional $555 government fee, you can get a
three month extension. The Patent Office has over six pages of
fees that it charges for patent-related services. Visit
www.uspto.gov and put “Fee Schedule” in the search box to see
the extensive fee list.
The high cost of responding to Office Action Rejections
An Office Action rejection may be "Final" or "Non Final." Non
Final Office Action rejections are the Patent Office’s first weapon
to deny your patent application. Responding to an Office Action
Non Final won’t cost you any additional government filing fees,
but you will have to pay thousands in legal fees for your Patent
Attorney. If your Patent Attorney’s hourly rate is $300 and they
spend eight hours on the response, your legal fees due will be at
least $2,400.
My former Patent Attorney charged me $2,900 in legal fees per
Office Action response, at the rate of $375 per hour. This
averaged to about eight hours in legal fees charged per response.
Before giving up and letting my patent application abandon, I paid
my former Patent Attorney almost $9,000 in legal fees on his three
Office Action responses.
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Your Patent Attorney’s response to the Office Action or RCE
Your Patent Attorney’s response to the Patent Examiner might
include an amendment of the claims (i.e. adding, rewriting or
reducing claims), an explanation of why the Patent Examiner’s
conclusions are incorrect, and/or a declaration explaining how their
opinion of what would be “obvious” with your invention is wrong.
Since most Patent Examiners do not have the “ordinary skill in the
art” knowledge to accurately understand your invention or
describe its benefits, your attorney may have to hire an expert in
the field of your invention to sign an affidavit of expertise. This
affidavit would then be submitted to the Patent Examiner. This
expert could cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
At some point in the expensive process of responding to Office
Action Non Finals, the Patent Examiner will issue an Office
Action Final. This gives you two options:
1. Your attorney can make further amendments and file a Request
for Continued Examination, which is commonly known as a RCE.
In an RCE, you are buying more time to have your Patent Attorney
argue with the Patent Examiner. Attorney’s fees on an RCE will
cost you several thousand dollars. This is on top of the
government filing fee (small entity) of $405.
2. Instead of filing an RCE, you can file an appeal with the Board
of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI). This transfers your
patent application from the Patent Examiner to the Appeals Board
and increases the chances for your patent claims and arguments to
be heard. Unfortunately, an appeal will cost thousands of dollars
in fees to the Patent Office and thousands of dollars in legal fees to
your Patent Attorney. Plus, there would be the expense of an
optional business trip for you and your attorney to the USPTO
offices in Alexandria, Virginia, where the Appeals Hearings are
held. Finally, just like the huge backlog of patent applications,
there is a sizable backlog of patents awaiting appeals by BPAI.
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The Patent Office makes hundreds of millions in patent
application fees each year
Each year, the Patent Office earns hundreds of millions of dollars
in patent application fees. According to
www.inventionstatistics.com, the number of patent applications
filed in 2009 was 482,871. This included 456,106 utility, 25,806
design and 959 plant patent applications filed. The average cost of
government filing fees for a Utility Patent was $500, (this includes
the basic filing fee of $165 as well as other typical fees) and the
2009 patent allowance/acceptance ratio was 42%. In 2009,
456,106 Utility Patent Applications were submitted at an average
government filing fee of $500 each. That is average annual gross
revenues to the Patent Office of at least $228 million dollars for
initial patent application fees.*
The Patent Office’s posted
allowance ratio in 2009 was 42%,
or $96 million of the total revenue.
This means that 58% or $132
million of the estimated initial
patent application revenue total was
earned by the Patent Office issuing
at least one Office Action rejection.
There must be an Office Action
Rejection Wheel in every Patent
Examiner’s office. This helps
Patent Examiners decide whether to
approve or deny a patent application. As you can see from the
wheel, there are very low odds for approval.
*According to a June 23, 2009 Reuters article, the Patent Office’s annual budget
has been estimated to be $1.9 Billion. The estimated Utility Patent Application
filing fee revenue makes up less than 15% of this annual budget.
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Different patent classes have different fees
When you analyze Mr. Nowotarski’s chart from page 24 (shown
again below), not every patent applicant pays the same amount of
legal fees over time. An inventor in a low patent allowance class
like Insurance & Finance pays about ten times the legal fees an
inventor in a high patent allowance class like Electrical Connectors
would pay.
Let’s say it costs $500 in government filing fees and $4,500 in
legal fees, or $5,000 total for your Patent Attorney to file your
Utility Patent Application. Let’s also assume the average cost for
each Office Action is $3,000 in legal fees. The Utility Patent Issue
fee, once granted, is $755 for a small entity.
For electrical connector patent applications in Class 439, this chart
indicates that there is 1 allowance for every 2 rejections. That
means the cost of an electrical connector patent would be $6,000 in
legal fees (2 Office Action rejections X $3,000 in legal fees per
time), plus the $5,000 initial cost, plus the $755 issuance fee, or
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$11,755 total. At the other end, this chart shows insurance and
finance patent applications in classes 705/004 and 705/035 to have
just 1 allowance for every 20 rejections. That means the cost of
those patents would be $60,000 in legal fees (20 Office Action
rejections X $3,000 in legal fees per time), plus the $5,000 initial
cost, plus the $755 issuance fee, or $65,755 total.
Imagine you were a Class 705/004 or 705/035 inventor and knew
you were going to spend $65,755 for a patent and be subject to 20
Office Action rejections. Further imagine that a friend of yours in
the Electrical Connector Class 439 would pay just $11,755 and
only go through 2 Office Action rejections. If you knew the low
patent allowance ratios for your class of invention ahead of time,
you may decide to not file a patent application. This could cause
the Patent Office to lose millions in potential revenue.
To protect its revenue streams, the Patent Office does not advertise
all the different patent allowance ratios. By shielding this
information from patent applicants, the Patent Office can continue
raking in significant numbers of initial filing, RCE & Appeals fees,
as well as the many other fees described in the extensive Fee
Schedule detailed on www.uspto.gov.
A good patent information website and a bad one too
There are a lot of websites about the patent process and various
patent issues run by Patent Attorneys, patent agents or other patent
professionals. All of these websites, except for my
www.dontfileapatent.com, encourage inventors to spend
thousands of dollars and file for a patent. Some are very
interesting.
One is www.ipwatchdog.com, which was created by a Patent
Attorney named Gene Quinn. This website is where Mr.
Nowotarski, aforementioned, has his article and comparison chart.
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In contrast to Mr. Quinn’s informative website is one known as
www.patentmyideaonline.com. This website has no contact
information for the creator, and that makes sense, because it has
some of the worst advice you will ever read. For example, the
“Can I patent my idea myself without a Patent Attorney?”
article says:
Q: “What is an inventor to do if they don’t have the money needed
to hire a Patent Attorney?”
A: “If the inventor doesn’t have the financial resources or
wherewithal to pay reasonable attorney’s fees, they should
seriously question whether they are truly prepared and positioned
to try and take their idea all the way to the market without help.
Pursuing an invention costs money and takes time.”
I completely disagree
In my experience, implying that filing a patent is any “help” to an
inventor is silly. Filing a patent does help a Patent Attorney’s
bottom line. Stating that an inventor needs an attorney to take a
product to market is not true. Patent Attorneys file for patents.
They don’t bring products to market.
Patent Examiners do not have “obvious skill in the art” to
determine the patentability of every type of invention
The USPTO requires entry level GS-5 Patent Examiners to have a
four year engineering degree from an accredited university. My
Patent Examiner (Miss E.P.) graduated from a prestigious Ivy
League University with a major in mechanical engineering and a
minor in math.
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Despite her extensive education, Miss E.P. lacks the technical
knowledge needed to differentiate between the plastic 3M Dual
Lock fasteners in my Storm Stoppers invention, and fabric “hook
and loop” Velcro fasteners. Patent Examiners may have a good
engineering background, but not every invention follows
engineering principles. Thus, a lot of an inventor’s success with
the USPTO comes down to how effective he is at communicating
his invention claims to the Patent Examiner.
In an effort to improve communication between patent applicants
and their examiners, in 2008, the USPTO instituted a “Full First
Action Interview Pilot Program.” Read about this program here:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/init_events/faipp_full.jsp. At the
top of the page you will read this summary:
Full First Action Interview Pilot: Under the Full First Action
Interview Pilot Program, an applicant is entitled to a first Office
Action Interview, upon request, prior to the first Office Action on
the merits. The examiner will conduct a prior art search and
provide applicant with a condensed pre-interview communication
citing relevant prior art and identifying proposed rejections or
objections. Within 30 days of receipt, applicant schedules an
interview and submits proposed amendments and/or arguments. At
the interview, the relevant prior art, proposed rejections,
amendments and arguments will be discussed.
When it was introduced in 2008, the info on the USPTO’s website
stated, “The program has shown that the patent process benefits
because patentability issues can be resolved early when the
Applicant and the Examiner discuss them one-on-one. For the
applications involved in the initial pilot, the First-Action
Allowance rate increased six-fold when compared to applications
from the same technology area not involved in the pilot.
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The First Action Interview Pilot program was introduced in mid2008 and was expanded to all patent classes in late 2012.
Inventors who had Office Actions prior to its 2008 inception, me
included, were denied access to this program. I can’t find any
Patent Attorneys who even knew this program existed. My former
Patent Attorney hadn’t heard of it, nor did I ever receive a letter
about it from the Patent Office. There is no point in having a
program that could improve the communication between the
USPTO and inventors, if no one knows it exists.
Although I didn’t participate in this First Action Interview
Program, my former Patent Attorney and I contacted Miss E.P.
directly in an effort to help her better understand the Storm
Stoppers product. In June of 2008, we had our first conference call
with her. This led to another conference call with her and her
supervisor (Mr. R.C.) in March of 2009.
Prior to this 2009 telephone conference with Miss E.P. & Mr. R.C.,
we shipped samples of the Storm Stoppers product and a video
news segment of my 2008 CNBC appearance where I lifted 50 lbs
of weight with 2 strips of 3M Dual Lock. To overcome her 35
U.S.C. 103(a) “obviousness” rejections from the 2nd Office Action,
we also submitted the following “Secondary Considerations” to
demonstrate the non-obviousness of the Storm Stoppers product:
1. An Affidavit of Commercial Success showing millions in
sales derived from the specific patent application claims.
2. Examples of knockoffs from copycat competitors.
3. Testimonial letters from dozens of customers who stated
that the reasons they purchased Storm Stoppers were
because of my invention claims.
My former Patent Attorney said we had a good chance with
overcoming the “obviousness” arguments due to MPEP § 1504.03
D on the USPTO website. This states, “Secondary considerations,
33
such as commercial success and copying of the design by others,
are relevant as a rebuttal of a prior obviousness rejection.
MPEP § 1504.03 D II “Prima Facie Obviousness” also states,
“As a whole, a design must be compared with something in
existence, and not something brought into existence by selecting
and combining features from prior art references. In re Jennings,
182 F.2d 207, 86 USPQ 68 (CCPA 1950). Absent such a
reference, no holding of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) can
be made, whether based on a single reference alone or in view of
modifications suggested by secondary prior art.”
However, all of the data and affidavits we submitted didn’t matter.
Despite her educational background, Miss E.P. lacked the obvious
skill in the art to know that high tensile strength plastic 3M Dual
Lock fasteners were different from low tensile strength fabric hook
and loop Velcro fasteners. In Miss E.P.’s mind, if something
snapped together, it was Velcro. I believe this is why she selected
the Velcro USA, Inc. patent from Perina as one of the six prior art
patents in her Office Action rejection.
The Patent Office’s rules prohibiting hindsight reconstruction and
combining the features from prior art references didn’t matter.
Miss E.P.’s arguments in her Office Actions appear to violate these
rules. But, there is a bigger lesson here: The Patent Examiner is
City Hall. It is rare to fight City Hall and win.
2008-09 Telephone Conference Box Score:
Patent Examiner Miss E.P.:
Inventor John D. Smith:
100
0**
** Mr. Smith fared worse than the final score in many of the skits
on Saturday Night Live’s famous Bill Swerski’s Super Fan series
honoring ‘Da Chicago Bears.
34
Other inventors have had similar experiences
A number of my readers have contacted me with anecdotes of their
own similar experiences with Patent Examiners. Mr. Cooper
Woodring of Rhode Island says, “In my case, after four
obviousness rejections for my utility application for my one-piece,
stackable and nesting plastic rocking chair, I retained a prominent
chair designer to write a declaration saying that he had reviewed
my application. This chair designer is the expert in plastic
stacking rocking chairs, and is the only one qualified to say what
would or would not be obvious to “one of ordinary skill in the
art.” The Examiner’s next Office Action simply stated that the
chair designer’s declaration was “unconvincing.”
Like my experience with Miss E.P. and Mr. Woodring’s
experience with his Patent Examiner, it is impossible for every
examiner to have the “obvious skill in the art” needed to evaluate
the patentability of every inventor’s invention.
It is common to use a patented product as a component in
another product
The sixth and final patent that Miss E.P. uses as prior art against
Storm Stoppers is one on 3M Dual Lock. What is curious is that I
already had two patents that use 3M Dual Lock and plastic, but
Miss E.P. did not cite these as prior art. By using the patent for
3M Dual Lock, Miss E.P. was implying that the Storm Stoppers
product is not patentable because it uses a patented product as one
of its components.
There are many patented products that use patented components in
their manufacturing. For example, there are dozens of patents on
tires and treads. These would not be possible without the existence
of the wheel. Similarly, cell phones couldn’t exist without the
presence of memory chips and LCD screens, which are also
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patented. If using a patented product in the manufacturing of
another product is wrong, I don’t think there would be any patents
on cell phones and tires.
Abandoning my patent application for good
The Patent Office offers a Board of Appeals that I could have
petitioned, but to do so would have cost at least $10,000 in legal
and government filing fees. After paying almost $25,000 in fees
responding to three Office Action rejections, I ran out of money
and had to let my patent application abandon. As the song, “The
Gambler” by Kenny Rogers goes, “You have to know when to hold
‘em and know when to fold ‘em.”
In your Office Action rejection, the Patent Examiner may
cite the illogical 35 U.S.C. 103(a) “obviousness” rejection
clause, which makes no sense
In their cover letter to you accompanying the Office Action
rejection will be the following statement:
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms
the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office
action: “A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not
identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this
title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be
patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a
whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made
to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject
matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negative by the manner
in which the invention was made.”
36
This 35 U.S.C. 103(a) clause is a ridiculous argument that the
Patent Examiner commonly uses to deny your patent application.
Patent Examiners will cite this over and over in both their Office
Action letters, as well as use it liberally throughout their 10 to 20
pages of remarks and supporting arguments.
This 35 U.S.C. 103(a) “rejection clause” is part of the recent,
complicated Supreme Court case of KSR v. Teleflex in 2007. This
is known as the “KSR Decision.” The 35 U.S.C. 103(a) rejection
is immensely complicated to both explain and understand, because
it makes no sense. The bottom line is that the 35 U.S.C. 103(a) is a
rejection argument that allows the Patent Examiner to reject all
your patent application claims for being obvious, even if they
aren’t.
The language of 35 U.S.C. 103(a) applied to real life
To illustrate how the 35 U.S.C. 103(a) rejection argument works,
pretend that in 2011, you invented a car that could, while driving,
sprout wings, take off and climb to 35,000 feet at the push of a
button. You file a patent application on your new and non-obvious
improvement to the automobile. Besides the fantastic car in the
1968 movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, it is not obvious to convert a
car to a high-flying airplane at the push of a button.
When the Patent Office rejects all of your patent claims several
years later at the first Office Action, the Patent Examiner will
reference this 35 U.S.C. 103(a) argument in their remarks and also
cite at least two prior art patents that have nothing to do with your
invention.
37
Imagine that the “prior art” cited will be the following nonexistent
Utility Patents:
1. The initial patent on the automobile by Henry Ford, dated
in 1910
2. A patent on tailfin assemblies by Lee Iacocca, dated in
1957.
In their Office Action rejection remarks, the Patent Examiner will
write a paragraph similar to the below:
“The subject invention is an automobile with a powerful
turbine jet engine in the rear, with collapsible wings on the
sides to convert it to an airplane at the push of a button.
Although Henry Ford’s Model T automobile patent does not
disclose that a vehicle could have wings or a jet propulsion
engine, it is notoriously well known in the art that putting
wings on cars can add stability while driving. It is also
notoriously well known in the art to put a jet engine in a car to
power it to speeds above 200 mph.”
“Lee Iacocca’s patent demonstrates that a vehicle could have
decorative tail fins that protrude longitudinally from the side
of the vehicle. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art at the time the invention was made to modify
Lee Iacocca’s tail fins by turning them sideways, add them to
the automobile taught by Henry Ford and add a button to
make them unfold as wings. It has been held to be within the
general skill of a worker in the art to select a known material
on the basis of its suitability for the intended use as a matter of
obvious design choice.”
You will see this “it would have been obvious to someone with
ordinary skill in the art” rejection repeatedly in your Office
Action. It is totally absurd. In the above example, it also doesn’t
38
make any sense. It simply wouldn’t work to take a decorative tail
fin and turn it into a functional airplane wing.
The six prior art patents have nothing to do with my invention
At the end of this chapter is my 3rd Office Action and the six prior
art patents Miss E.P. combined to suggest that my Storm Stoppers
product was an “obvious” improvement of them. As you will read,
one is the patent for 3M Dual Lock which is used in Storm
Stoppers. The second one is a baseball backstop for children; the
third is a patent for Velcro hook and loop fabric fasteners, and the
fourth is a patent for a lifeline for boats from 1952. None of these
have anything to do with hurricane window protection.
The two remaining patents are for metal, bolt-on hurricane
shutters, which both use “penetrating fasteners” such as screws or
bolts. My Storm Stoppers invention doesn’t use screws or bolts
because bolted on hurricane shutters prevent homeowners from
escaping from their homes during an emergency. Since 1998,
almost a dozen homeowners have died in fires when they were
trapped behind their bolted on hurricane shutters. Google
Hurricane Shutter Tragedies and read about the many
deaths caused by bolted on hurricane shutters. You can also see 2
action videos of firefighters discussing the dangers.
According to the statements of the Patent Examiner in her three
Office Actions, it would have been “obvious” to these any of the
prior art patent owners, such as metal hurricane shutter
manufacturers, to SUDDENLY make their product out of
corrugated plastic and discard using their penetrating fasteners and
fasten it to the home with 3M Dual Lock fasteners, because it is
“within the general skill of a worker in the art to select a known
material, and 3M Dual Lock is commercially available at
hardware stores.”
39
Some obvious questions
If protecting windows with corrugated plastic fastened by 3M Dual
Lock fasteners was so obvious, why is it that no other inventor had
created a product like Storm Stoppers before I did? And since
there is nothing similar, how can my Storm Stoppers invention be
argued as “an obvious improvement of the prior art”? Also,
aren’t all inventions created with known materials?
It is very frustrating to read the illogic of the 35 U.S.C. 103(a)
rejection argument and see how the Patent Examiner uses it over
and over again to claim that your invention is obvious. This is
another example of how the patent application process is a game
you cannot win.
Filing a patent application wastes valuable capital that you
should be using to develop and market your product
Filing a Utility Patent Application on your invention wastes capital
that would be better spent investing in product development and
marketing. Since hindsight is 20/20, here are some profitable
investments I could have made with the tens of thousands of
dollars I spent on my Utility Patent Application:
1. I could have bought and sold more Storm Stoppers inventory,
giving me a profitable return on my investment;
2. I could have invested in advertising, such as TV commercials,
hurricane guide ads, or postcard mailings to potential
customers. These could have led to more sales, increasing the
return on my investment.
40
3. I could have paid the booth rental fee for at least a dozen home
shows, potentially reaching tens of thousands of new customers,
as well as new distributors.
4. I could have invested in R & D for new markets for my
invention. These include using my product as a window
insulator against heat loss in winter homes (shown on the left).
Other lucrative applications are as a replacement for drywall in
shopping malls (shown on the right). These new markets could
generate new sales and a new customer base.
5. In 2007, I donated and installed $5,000 worth of Storm Stoppers
on the Salvation Army Headquarters building in Nassau,
Bahamas. This made the front pages of all three newspapers
and was the lead off news video on ZNS TV News. My
goodwill donation brought a lot of retail customer and
distributor interest and was also a legitimate tax deduction in
the amount of $10,000 for my company from the IRS.
Like this effort, I could also have done a donation trip to Red
Cross shelters in hurricane-prone areas like North and South
Carolina. The donations might have also brought me in contact
with potential customers and distributors in those states. Plus,
this donation would have also earned a break on our corporate
taxes from the IRS.
It makes sense to invest your money in your product to make it
better, in research and design to find other profitable uses, and in
marketing your product to position it first in the mind of your
41
customer. In my experience, filing a patent will be a drain on your
capital and will not contribute to profit for most independent
inventors or small businesses.
The patent process takes approximately 3 to 6 years; your
product could be obsolete by the time the patent issues
According to www.inventionstatistics.com, in 2009, there were
482,871 patent applications filed. That same year, there were only
6,285 Patent Examiners. Every year since, the rate of new patent
applications has increased, while the number of Patent Examiners
has remained constant. That means that each Patent Examiner has
a work load of at least 80 patents to review each year. Moreover,
there is a backlog of 1.2 million patent applications waiting to be
reviewed.
In 1998 when I filed for the first of my two patents on my
collegiate wheel covers, it took an average of 12 to 18 months for
an inventor to receive the first Office Action rejection. Now it
takes anywhere from two to four years for an inventor to receive
the first Office Action rejection. If you look at most products, they
change over time.
Manufacturers are constantly improving their products
In 1951, the three point seat vehicle seat belt was patented by
Americans Roger Griswold and Hugh De Haven. Their patented
product didn’t sell. In 1959, Swedish inventor Nils Bohlen created
an improved three point seat belt for Volvo, and was subsequently
granted a U.S. patent. Volvo introduced this seat belt as standard
in all of new cars by the end of that year. Most modern seat belts
in vehicles today are variations of Mr. Bohlen’s design. You could
42
say that Nils Bohlen is the man behind the seat belt that you use
when you drive today.
Like the eight year gap in the successful design of the three point
seat belt, you will improve your product over time. Since there is a
long delay in having your product get to the first Office Action
rejection, there will be even more delays if the Patent Office
continues to reject it in ensuing Office Actions. By the time your
original patent application would ostensibly issue, your product
could be dramatically different and more improved than what you
filed for originally. Thus, your improved product described in the
old patent application could be obsolete by the time the patent
issues.
You might be out of business by the time your patent issues
A January 12, 2011 article in the Houston Chronicle newspaper
reinforces the extremely long delays for patents to issue. Entitled
“Spring, Texas Man Receives Patent for Software,” the article
describes how SimDesk Technologies filed their patent application
in 2007 and that Patent #7,865,504 was granted on January 4,
2011. Although the article doesn’t say how many Office Action
rejections the company went through, it did disclose that SimDesk
went out of business in 2008.
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Patent Police Official Vehicle:
Patent Police K-9 Team:
A patent does not protect your product against a copycat; it
just gives you the legal right to sue
Owning a patent does not prevent a copycat competitor from
knocking off your product and making profits from your hard work
and innovation. All a patent does is gives you the legal right to sue
the copycat company. However, most inventors cannot afford the
millions of dollars that patent infringement litigation costs.
In a February, 2009 article entitled “Cost and duration of patent
litigation,” Patent Attorney Richard Margiano stated, “the
average patent litigation lasts about two years and costs $3
million. An appeal can add another $2 million and one year to
that estimate.”
There is no “Patent Police,” or “Patent 911”
If someone steals your car or breaks into your home, you call 911
and the police come. They take a report from you, launch an
investigation and possibly arrest the offender, depending on the
evidence. Eventually, the State’s Attorney’s Office will prosecute
44
the offender in criminal court. There is no charge to you (the
plaintiff) for the investigative or prosecution costs.
If you are a patented inventor and a copycat competitor infringes
on your patent and copies your product, there is no “Patent 911” to
call. The “Patent Police” don’t show up, there is no investigation
and they don’t arrest and prosecute the infringer. The U.S. Patent
Office in Alexandria, Virginia doesn’t do anything for you. The
“Patent Prosecutor” is your $300 or more per hour litigation
attorney and doesn’t do anything unless you pay him in advance.
File a lawsuit and the defense could file expensive
counterclaims against you
Filing a lawsuit against a copycat company exposes you to legal
“counterclaims” filed by the defendant. A counterclaim is a minilawsuit brought in response to a plaintiff’s filing of his own lawsuit
against a defendant. Using counterclaims, the defendant could
make allegations that the plaintiff has “defamed” his reputation in
some way. Counterclaims are typically filed as part of a
defendant’s answer to your lawsuit.
Counterclaims can contain a variety of allegations, ranging from
accusations of fraudulent activity to harassment. The goal of a
counterclaim is to turn the tables on the plaintiff by bringing up
more issues in the case and demanding redress. Counterclaims
create leverage for the defendant. By filing a lawsuit against a
copycat competitor, they can respond with their own counterclaims
against you for whatever reasons they decide. These counterclaims
will increase your costs and have the potential for altering your
filed lawsuit.
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The pros and cons of “Cease & Desist” letters
In my experience, having your attorney send a copycat competitor
a Cease & Desist letter has both advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage of sending one would be that the copycat
competitor agrees to immediately stop their infringing behavior. If
that happens, you will only be out the money you paid your
attorney to write the Cease & Desist letter.
A disadvantage of sending a Cease & Desist letter that threatens
legal action is that the copycat competitor could choose to pursue a
Declaratory Judgment Action (commonly called a “Deck Action”)
against you. Filing this gives the copycat a significant tactical
advantage, as the hearing will be set in their own jurisdiction. If
they are in another state, this will require your attorney to appear at
their local court, at your expense.
As a result of the copycat competitor’s initiating a Declaratory
Judgment Action against you, the court may issue a Declaratory
Judgment by itself or with some other relief, such as an award of
damages or an injunction. Declaratory Judgment Actions will cost
you a lot of time and money.
Optimistically, your Cease & Desist letter could work (as the
Cease & Desist letter I reprinted in Appendix D at the back of this
book did for me), but sending this letter could also backfire on you.
The copycat could call your bluff and ignore it, causing you to
actually follow through on filing an expensive lawsuit, or the
copycat could file a Deck Action against you. Thus, you should
carefully consider the pros and cons of sending a Cease & Desist
letter to a copycat.
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My experience as the Plaintiff in a Trademark Infringement Lawsuit
The following is a lengthy synopsis of what happened to me when
several copycat competitors infringed on my Federal Trademarks.
This knowledge cost me at least $75,000 in legal fees paid to my
former litigation attorney.
The beginning….
I first heard about a Storm Stoppers Trademark Infringer at a home
show. Visitors to our booth kept saying they “already got a
sample” at the “other” Storm Stoppers booth. Upon further
investigation, my employees and I learned that this other booth
was staffed by a former Storm Stoppers dealer selling a knockoff
product. He had gone so far as to put new labels over our existing
product samples, so when
you held it up to the light,
you could see our label
underneath. We took
photos of his banner,
which used our
Trademarked “Stylized S” logo and other identifying marks. This
banner was identical to our own except for him misspelling
“pannels” with an extra N. He was also using our copyrighted
photos and installation instructions without our permission.
I emailed my Patent Attorney to notify him of the obvious
Trademark Infringement. Responding to my email cost one hour
of his time at his normal hourly rate of $300.
In responding to my email, my former Patent Attorney said that he
was only a Patent Attorney who files for Patents, Trademarks &
Copyrights. He told me I’d need to hire a litigation attorney to file
a Complaint against the infringer. In legal jargon, a “Complaint”
is a lawsuit. My former Patent Attorney gave me a referral to the
47
litigation attorney (Mr. T.H.) he recommended. It is unclear if my
Patent Attorney got a referral fee from Mr. T.H.
Litigation Attorney Retainers are expensive
I made an appointment with the litigation attorney. At his initial
consultation, he told me that one option was for him to send the
infringer a Cease & Desist letter. This would cost me a $5,000
initial retainer. He advised me that if I wanted him to take the
case (i.e. file a Lawsuit, aka “Complaint”), I’d need to pay a
separate retainer. That retainer was around $10,000. He also
provided me a disclosure of all his other fees and costs. These
were for postage, copies, phone calls, etc. It also disclosed what
was excluded, such as court costs and trial representation work.
In my experience, litigation attorneys love a potential infringement
case, especially if you are the original inventor of the product.
Because most inventors are passionate about their product, the
litigation attorney can count on the inventors’ emotions taking over
common sense. That certainly applied to me back then. I was
outraged by this Trademark Infringer and wanted them to pay for
all the damage they had caused to my business.
There are probably some attorneys who would recommend you not
sue a copycat competitor, but in my experience those attorneys are
in the minority. My former litigation attorney didn’t advise me
what was best for my situation. He didn’t advise me how
worthless Federal Judgments really are. He fed my outrage by
telling me I had a great infringement case and we could win
“tremendous damages.” He didn’t disclose how impossible it
would be to collect on a Federal Judgment.
After paying my former litigation attorney the $5,000 retainer, he
mailed a Cease & Desist letter to the infringer. I’ve since learned
that Cease & Desist letters are a very common strategy against
48
infringers. Chances are he had a template on file so he didn’t have
to do any real work on the letter.
Most infringers will hire their own attorney when they receive your
attorney’s Cease & Desist letter. If the infringer hires an attorney,
but does not turn the matter over to his insurance company,
chances are good that his attorney will want to settle the matter
quickly. Settling the matter at this step would be the most costeffective for you, as the infringement would stop. The infringer
may even pay you a small sum of money. If the infringer settles
right away, you’ll only be out the initial retainer you paid to your
attorney, less any settlement money you recover as a result of your
successful Cease & Desist letter. My attorneys have never given
me a refund of any unused portion of the advance retainer.
To see an example of a trademark infringer’s advertisement, a
Cease & Desist letter and a Settlement Agreement from the
infringer’s attorney, please see Appendixes C, D & E. In the
Settlement Agreement, you will see a lot of the “My client the
infringer did nothing wrong” language, which I describe below.
If the infringer’s insurance company gets involved, it is going
to cost you
Since the Trademark Infringer had “advertising injury” insurance
as part of their business insurance policy, they turned my
attorney’s Cease & Desist letter over to their insurance company.
This increased my costs significantly. This insurance company
then hired their own high priced litigation attorney to respond to
my attorney’s letter. Their goal was to manipulate me into filing a
Trademark Infringement lawsuit. It worked too.
49
The infringing party’s attorney will tell your attorney there was no
infringement and that you have no case
The insurance company’s attorney told my attorney that there was
no infringement and that we didn’t have a case. They also said that
they were prepared to “vigorously defend” this matter and that the
facts as alleged were “totally without merit.” As dishonest as
this may seem, if their client is even a little bit guilty of
infringement, most attorneys will deny that their client infringed on
anything. They do that because this creates negotiating leverage
for them and their client.
Hypothetically, if you are McDonald’s and the infringer is a new
burger restaurant that puts a giant, lighted Yellow M on their roof
while serving hamburgers and fries, the Yellow M Burger
Restaurant’s attorney will deny any similarities between its
restaurant and McDonald’s. This starts the typical game played by
attorneys in patent or trademark infringement cases. No infringer
will ever admit to infringing, especially when they have stolen
your Intellectual Property.
Manipulation of the inventor to sue the infringer/copycat
Going to trial is very profitable for attorneys, so the smart ones
will attempt to subtly manipulate the plaintiff into suing their
client. What the infringer’s attorney was doing by telling my
attorney that we had no case was goading me into filing the
infringement lawsuit. Initially, they made a lowball offer of a few
hundred dollars to settle it, knowing full well that I must have
spent several thousand dollars on my attorney’s initial retainer.
This lowball offer, along with their condescending attitude, was
designed at infuriating me so I would file the infringement lawsuit.
When that happened, these attorneys were then able to bill their
client (the insurance company) for their legal fees and make all
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sorts of money, as part of the ongoing patent infringement
litigation.
This is a profitable game that litigation attorneys play well. When
my attorney saw the insurance company’s low ball offer, he
probably smoked a celebratory cigar, because he was now that
much closer to collecting $10,000 in trial retainers from me. I
remember that my former litigation attorney showed me the low
ball settlement offer and letter. He empathized with me and told
me a personal anecdote about what a jerk this attorney was*.
* Intellectual Property (IP) litigation is a relatively small legal specialty,
and most attorneys in this field know one another.
My attorney then said the best chance for “protecting” my product
and recovering damages was to file a lawsuit in Federal Court.
This is because Trademark and Copyright Infringement is handled
at that jurisdictional level. My Trademark Infringement Lawsuit
retainer was $10,000 and subsequent retainers were from $5,000 to
$10,000. This was billed against my litigation attorney’s 2006
hourly rate of $300. Another way of looking at a retainer like this
is that each $5,000 retainer prepaid for almost 17 hours of legal
fees ($5,000/$300 per hour). Retainers pay for depositions,
hearings and witness statements, among other expenses.
Litigation involves endless delays and huge expenses
I paid my former attorney $38,000 in retainers within the first 6
months of meeting him. This was for three Trademark
Infringement Complaints. Two of the infringers quickly settled,
while the third proceeded towards trial. I focused on gathering the
necessary evidence for this trial. This included the copycat
infringer’s product samples, advertisements, photos from home
shows, etc.
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Less than one year after filing the lawsuit, we were ordered by the
Judge to participate in Mediation. Mediation is a non-binding
attempt to settle the matter by a third-party independent mediator.
Mediation is also expensive, as most mediators charge over $150
per hour for their time. This expense is split evenly between the
plaintiff and defendant. There are also additional expenses, such
as hiring a court reporter and travel time. For one of the trademark
infringement lawsuits, we spent most of the day in Mediation. We
had to travel over 250 miles roundtrip from Orlando for the
privilege of wasting a day and thousands of dollars for Mediation.
If Mediation fails, the Judge will schedule the lawsuit for trial.
The trial will be set at least one year later, since most Federal
Courts are overbooked and most Federal Judges are so busy. The
trial date will have been a long time since you first notified your
attorney of the infringer. If a trial date is set, your costs will
increase substantially.
More delays and more money spent
After giving my former litigation attorney another $6,000 in
retainers, for a total of $44,000, I turned my focus back to my
business, and start working harder and longer to recover the
$44,000 I spent on this matter.
My attorney did his part to show he was working hard to earn my
$44,000 in advance retainers. I recall there were hearings,
depositions and several attorney-client conferences. It wouldn’t
have surprised me if he had taken my file to dinner as his “date” at
a fancy steakhouse, so he could bill my retainer a few hours and
enjoy a delicious steak, all paid for by me. This may not be as silly
as it sounds, as attorneys frequently charge their clients their
hourly rate for business lunches and dinners, even if very little
business is discussed at the meal.
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The insurance company’s high-priced defense lawyer played his
own legal games within the Federal Court system. There were
motions, hearings and a lot of legal posturing that my attorney had
to respond in writing to. These tactics were all designed to drive
up my costs. During the time all this was going on, a lot of Storm
Stoppers profits were going to pay these legal bills. The infringer
was not affected. He was copying my product, exhibiting in more
home shows, stealing customers and running some of my retail
dealers out of business.
I complained to my attorney, but he told me there was nothing he
could do. “Wait until the trial, I’m going to get them.” he said.
The Trial
The Trademark Infringement lawsuit trial took less than one day.
This was a good thing, as I was out of money. The trial lasted less
than a day because neither the defendant nor his attorney showed
in court. At the time, I thought that not showing for a Federal
Court Trial would result in a Notice to Appear or Bench Warrant
being issued by the Federal Judge. I thought that a Contempt
Hearing for the defendant’s attorney and an immediate arrest
warrant would be served on the defendant. After all, this was the
imposing “Federal” Court. However, no such thing happened. It
is very odd that there are no consequences for disobeying a Federal
Court Judge’s trial orders.
Without the defense present, we won a “default judgment” in the
amount of $108,125. This included $62,000 in damages against
two defendants, $30,000 in damages against the other two
defendants and $16,125 in damages against all four defendants for
“fees and costs.”
The Judge also entered an Injunction against the defendants. An
Injunction is a Court Order forbidding someone from infringing on
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your intellectual property rights in the future. My attorney told me
this was “valuable,” as it meant the copycat competitor would be
required by the Court to stop infringing my Federal Trademarks.
This could have been valuable, if the infringer was still in business.
As I recall, in the almost two years it took for the matter to go to
trial, the infringer went out of business. This is when I learned that
copycats are just in business for the short term. I also learned that
even if the copycat had ignored the court’s injunction, I would
have had to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees to bring this to
the attention of the Federal Court. To my surprise, the court does
not enforce the Judgments it issues.
After the trial, I had several worthless pieces of paper, including:
1. The Federal Judgment for $108,125
2. The Injunction
I was also out the $75,000+ in retainers and legal bills to my
former litigation attorney. While I was working 80+ hours a week
to repay the risky 2nd mortgage I took on my home to pay for this
whole mess, my former litigation attorney and his wife took an
extended vacation to yacht basins along the East Coast. This was
probably paid for by my advance retainer fees. I sorely needed a
vacation but could no longer afford it.
Federal Judges issue Judgments but don’t enforce them
Right after getting my Federal Judgment, my former litigation
attorney wrote me an email saying, “If you collect this Judgment of
$108,125, you could buy yourself a brand new Corvette Z-1 (620
horsepower - top speed over 200 mph) with all the bells and
whistles.”
After a celebratory dinner, I thought all I needed to do was pick up
a check from the Clerk of the Federal Court for the $108,125. This
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was incorrect. To my surprise, winning the lawsuit didn’t make
the other side pay the Judgment amount. Prior to suing the
Trademark Infringer, my former litigation attorney told me that
Federal Judges “don’t mess around,” and that Federal Judgments
are “Badass.” Since there is no enforcement by the Federal Court,
I learned that a Federal Judgment is just another worthless piece of
paper.
The high cost of trying to collect judgments
To collect my Federal Judgment, I had to seize and liquidate the
Judgment Debtor’s assets. These were bank accounts, vehicles,
property deeds, etc. I had to locate them first, and so I hired a
Private Investigator and other “asset location” specialists.
Collecting a Judgment is very difficult for an average Judgment
Creditor. It is even more difficult because of all the rules of the
Federal Court. These rules include that every single Judgment
collection action has to be approved by a Federal Court Judge.
Free legal handcuffs with Federal Judgments
When you get a Judgment in Federal Court, you also get a set of
legal handcuffs that effectively prevent you from collecting the
Judgment. For example, you’ll learn that all of your collection
efforts have to first be approved by a Federal Judge. Each time a
Motion is filed, the Federal Court’s email system sends an email
out to all the attorneys on the case. Thus, as soon as the Judgment
Creditor’s collection or litigation attorney files a Motion with the
Court, (such as a Motion for Bank Levy) the Judgment Debtor’s
attorney will get an email notice from the Clerk of the Federal
Court.
Since a Federal Judge has to rule on the Motion, the Federal
Court’s advance email gives the Judgment Debtor’s attorney time
to warn his client of your impending Bank Levy, thus giving the
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Judgment Debtor sufficient time to close all his bank accounts.
This is called “hiding assets to defraud creditors.” However, due
to the Federal Court rules, you have to spend tens of thousands of
dollars on investigators and attorneys. Even though that Judgment
Debtor may have disobeyed the Judge’s Order, there seems to be
no punishment or negative consequences for him.
Collections Attorneys
To effectively collect the new Judgment, most Judgment holders
(known as “Judgment Creditors” in legal jargon) will need to hire a
collections attorney, since it is a specialized field. Like your
litigation attorney, your new collections attorney will require an
advance retainer. In Florida, the average initial collections
attorney’ retainer for a Judgment of $100,000 is 5% or $5,000.
Although it is possible, it is not likely to find a collections attorney
who will take your case on contingency. When an attorney takes a
case on contingency, you don’t pay him anything in advance. He
recovers his fees and expenses out of what he collects. There are
attorneys who specialize in representing clients on contingency.
However, these clients tend to have easy lawsuits against large,
publicly-traded companies with deep pockets. The reality is that
most collections matters are against small companies with limited
assets or against companies where the owner is the company.
Thus, unless one of your relatives is a collections attorney, you
will be paying for their services in advance with your own money.
Once you pay your new collections attorney his initial retainer, he
will start working on collecting your Federal Judgment. Most
collections attorneys collect less than 20% of the amount of the
Judgment, and it takes about two years to collect this amount.
There will be more hearings and depositions. The Judgment
Debtor’s attorney will be using his own legal techniques to thwart
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your collection efforts. After all, this attorney needs to make
money too.
Responding to all the Judgment Debtor’s legal techniques will take
your Collections Attorney’s time and quickly eat into your advance
retainer. It is likely that you will have spent $10,000 in retainers to
a collections attorney before he collects anything.
Your collection attorney has good news
Let’s say two years have gone by since you hired your collections
attorney and he calls with good news. The bank garnishment and
the vehicle seizure was a success and led to him recovering
$10,000 in cash. As the song, “Celebrate,” by Kool and the Gang
goes: C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E Good Times, Come on!
The $10,000 in recovered funds is deposited with the Clerk of the
Federal Court, pending the Federal Court’s ruling on whether you
get to keep it. After waiting six more months for the Federal Court
to rule that the $10,000 is yours, this money is then deposited into
your collection attorney’s Trust Account to be put towards his
accrued legal fees of $14,000. This is on top of your $10,000 in
advance retainers already paid. After the $10,000 in recovered
money is applied to his $14,000 bill, your collections attorney
gives you a bill for $4,000, which you now owe.
In addition to the money you paid in legal fees to prosecute the
infringer, you also spent 4 ½ years of your life trying to collect the
$10,000. This included 2 years to get to trial, 2 more years trying
to collect and 6 months waiting for the Judge to turn over the
recovered money to your attorney.
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Beware an attorney that encourages you to sue
When I first received notice about the $108,125 Federal Judgment,
I was full of hope. I remember thinking that this $108,125 was
going to defray my accumulated $75,000 in legal bills, while also
giving me money to continue building the Storm Stoppers brand.
In hindsight, my former litigation attorney’s whole “You have to
protect your Trademarks, John” speech was really about
producing revenue for him, not in helping me.
If he had told me that Federal Judgments are worthless because
they are impossible to collect, I would have never spent over
$75,000 with his firm. He could have saved his “Federal
Judgments are Badass” and “Federal Judges don’t mess around”
speeches, as Judgments are not enforced by the Federal Court.
If my former litigation attorney had my interests at heart, he would
have told me to spend my money at building my brand and beating
the copycat competitor at home shows and in the marketplace.
Although this would have been sound client advice, my former
litigation attorney did not do these things.
#8 Reason not to file a patent:
The Patent Office is a complicated bureaucracy with many
problems that may never be fixed
In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed former IBM
Executive David J. Kappos to overhaul the U.S. Patent &
Trademark Office. According to many recent news articles, the
outlook for the planned improvements to be completed is bleak.
On January 16, 2011, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Economics
Writer John Schmid wrote an article entitled “Despite efforts to
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improve, U.S. Patent approvals move slower.” This article
talked about the current backlog of 1.2 million patent applications
awaiting examination by Patent Examiners. The article also
quoted Paul Michel, retired Chief Justice of the Federal Court in
Washington, DC, “In China, there are thousands of engineers who
don’t work in labs inventing new technologies. They sit in
computer rooms reading U.S. Patent Applications on the Internet.
And, since these are Patent Applications pending approval, these
Chinese engineers can use the technology anywhere in the world,
including in America. American economic security is threatened
in a way Congress has failed to recognize.”
The Patent Office publishes your patent application for anyone
to see just 18 months after the priority date
The above Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story described how an
inventor’s patent application will be published online at
www.uspto.gov, 18 months after the earliest priority date.
Publication of patent applications is required by the American
Inventors Protection Act of 1999 for most plant and utility patent
applications filed on or after November 29, 2000. Publication
occurs after the expiration of an 18-month period following the
earliest effective filing date or priority date claimed by an
application.
Following publication, the application for a patent is no longer
held in confidence by the Office and any member of the public
may request access to the entire file history of the application. In
less time than it takes your Utility Patent Application to make it to
the first Office Action, the Patent Office releases all of it,
including your claims, description and drawings, to anyone with an
Internet connection.
Mr. Schmid’s article reinforces my Reason #6 NOT to file a patent
on page 42. He states that because patent applications languish so
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long, the technologies can become obsolete before the patent is
ruled upon. He also tells the story of several inventors who were
victimized by the Patent Office’s ineptitude. One of the inventors
Mr. Schmid describes filed his application in 1999. Sometime
after 2003, the Patent Office lost his application file. In 2008, that
inventor found a sympathetic clerk, who on her own time, went
and found the file lying on the floor of someone’s office. This
inventor then got the runaround for several more years.
Patent maintenance fees are expensive and unreasonable
All U.S. Patents have regular “patent maintenance” fees that are
due at different intervals. To continue your patent for its 20 year
duration, you are required to pay these fees. If you do not pay
these fees, your patent prematurely expires.
These patent maintenance fees are listed on the inside cover of
issued patents. You can see a precise fee schedule at
www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee031913.htm.
Here are the amounts and the due dates of the Utility Patent
Maintenance Fees:
•
•
•
$980, due 3.5 years after the issue date;
$2,480, due 7.5 years after the issue date;
$4,110, due 11.5 years after the issue date.
Independent inventors, small business concerns and nonprofit
organizations are eligible for a 50% reduction in these fees. If you
do not pay these patent maintenance fees on time, you will have to
pay an additional $130 late fee. If more than 6 months go by after
the due date, your patent will expire.
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To reinstate it, you will have to pay the following reinstatement
fees:
•
•
Surcharge after expiration—late payment is unavoidable: $700
Surcharge after expiration—late payment is unintentional: $1,640
(Note: The USPTO website does not explain the difference between
“unavoidable” and “unintentional”)
According to the Patent Office, “The amount, number and timing
of these maintenance fees may be changed by Law or Regulation.”
That means that if, two years after your patent issue date, the
Patent Office decides to triple the patent maintenance fees, you
will be forced into paying them or having your patent expire.
There’s no maintenance on a patent; no gears to oil
What is unreasonable about these patent maintenance fees is that
there is no maintenance on a patent. A patent isn’t a working
device that has gears that need oiling, or something vital and
important, like the landing gear of a Boeing 737 or a Heart
Pacemaker.
A patent is a collection of your patent claims, a description and
black and white drawings that are printed on inexpensive white
copy paper and stapled together. This is then inserted into an
inexpensive beige cover with an embossed red ribbon and gold
seal. A patent isn’t fancy. The patent cover from my first patent
(#5,931,543) is shown on the front cover of this book. Patents
aren’t impressive for all the money you spend getting them.
According to Patently O’s (www.patentlyo.com) March 25, 2011
blog posting “Paying Maintenance Fees,” more than one-third of
the USPTO's two-billion-dollar annual budget comes from
maintenance fee payments. When you add in the estimated patent
application fee revenue detailed on page 28, more than half of the
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USPTO’s annual revenue comes from just two fees. Patently O’s
blog posting confirms that “The USPTO does not provide any
ongoing services to patent holders.”
An inventor doesn’t receive any benefit from paying patent
maintenance fees. As of 2010, an independent inventor, small
business concern or nonprofit organization would have to pay
$3,785 over the 20 year duration of their patent. They would also
owe several thousands of dollars in legal fees to their Patent
Attorney each time the maintenance fees paperwork is prepared.
The Patent Office may be showing favoritism towards big
companies that, year after year, are awarded hundreds or
thousands of patents
On January 10, 2013, IFI CLAIMS® Patent Services, the leading
producer of value-added U.S. patent databases and indexing
services, announced a ranking of the Top 50 companies awarded
U.S. patents in 2012. This is called 2012 US Patent Leaders.
The graph above shows the first 10. Please see Appendix G for the
entire Top 50 List.
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The total number of patents granted in 2012 to these 50 companies
was 70,578. This is 28% of the 253,155* Utility Patents issued in all
of 2012 by the Patent Office. Because such a large percentage of
patents are granted to such a small number of companies, the Patent
Office could be showing favoritism towards companies like these.
* Source: www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm
When you examine previous years’ Top 50 lists, you see the same
companies listed again and again. According to the Top 300
Patents Issued List, created by the Intellectual Property Owners
Association, in 2011 IBM was granted 6,180 patents, making it #1
on both lists two years in a row. In fact, IBM has held this top spot
for the last 18 years. Eight of the ten companies listed in 2012’s
Top 10 list held the same ranking in 2011 and previous years.
How would these lists affect a Patent Examiner’s review of an
independent inventor or a small businesses’ patent application?
Hypothetically, if a Patent Examiner reviews a new patent
application from a company like IBM, Samsung, Microsoft or
Canon, he is statistically more likely to approve it, based on the
thousands of past patents that company already owns.
On the other hand, if a Patent Examiner reviews a patent
application from an independent inventor who has no patents
issued, or an inventor with only a few issued patents, the Patent
Examiner could be more likely to subject that type of inventor to
repeated Office Action rejections on his patent application.
Think of it like this: If you were a Patent Examiner or Supervisor,
and you were reporting to Patent Commissioner David Kappos,
would you rather say, “I denied Apple’s iPhone® 5 patent
application.” OR “I denied _____________ (independent
inventor’s) patent application”?
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3rd Office Action rejection & 6 "prior art" patents
To help you understand how Office Actions cost you
thousands in legal fees and government filing fees, and to
show you the specific language a Patent Examiner uses to
reject your patent application, attached is my entire 3rd
Office Action paperwork (redacted) from the Patent
Office, including:
• Photos and descriptions of my Storm Stoppers
invention.
• The letter from my former Patent Attorney
requesting $2,900 in legal fees and $405 in
Request for Continued Examination (RCE)
government filing fees for this 3rd Office Action.
• The six “prior art” patents that the Patent Examiner
claims makes Storm Stoppers un-patentable.
These include the baseball backstop patent, the 59
year old lifeline-for-boats patent, the Velcro patent
and the two bolted on metal shutter patents.
• The Patent Examiner’s riveting 17 page Office
Action rejection letter
These are examples of the roadblocks and games the
Patent Office will play with you if you file a patent.
TO WIN THIS GAME: DON’T FILE A PATENT!
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This is a letter from my Patent Attorney wanting $2,900 in
legal fees to respond to the 3rd Office Action, when I already
paid him this amount twice before so he could submit similar
arguments.
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My Storm Stoppers Invention: These are some of the unique
and non-obvious patent application claims that none of the “prior
art” patents have (source: www.plywoodalternative.com)
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“PRIOR ART” PATENT #1
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3rd Office Action from Patent Office (17 pages total)
Patent Examiner Miss E.P.’s response to my attorney’s arguments is on
pages 86-89. You can see her 35 U.S.C. 103(a) rejection statement on
page 75, as well as the “it would be obvious to someone of ordinary skill
in the art” statements sprinkled throughout her Office Action rejection.
Author’s note: In her Office Actions, Miss E.P. frequently misstates
(aka lies) about what the paragraphs in the other prior art patents say.
For instance, at the top of Page 11 of her Office Action (on page 84 of
this book), she states that Tomer’s #5,460,363 handle “can be attached
by interlocking fasteners that do not penetrate through the panel.” She
then lists Column 2, lines 52-68; column 3, lines 5-14 and line 25
where you could ostensibly read this in Tomer’s patent. However, the
referenced lines in Tomer’s patent do not say what Miss E.P. claims.
This disingenuous practice by Miss E.P. is prevalent in many of the other
prior art patents she cites. Please see Appendix J.
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PART 2
Tips & strategies to encourage you to
manufacture and sell your invention yourself
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"Always do the right thing;
This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Mark Twain
CHAPTER 2
Stay out of trouble so you don’t miss any opportunities
The opportunity to work for yourself selling your invention is a
unique, possibly once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Thus, stay out of
trouble, so you don’t screw it up. I have learned that there are
fantastic opportunities for me as an entrepreneur and inventor.
These opportunities include a five minute live national broadcast
for Storm Stoppers on CNBC’s Power Lunch in 2008. That one
TV appearance brought in tens of thousands of dollars in revenue.
Make good choices
All you have is your good name, your character and your
reputation. If you make a bad choice, many opportunities will
disappear. An arrest for drinking and driving, for example, can
easily derail your ambitions. A choice like that could also have
life-altering consequences.
My Uncle Dick has been a successful
drug and alcohol abuse counselor in
Detroit for over 30 years. My uncle’s
business, Smith Counseling Center,
www.smithcounseling.com, has many
clients who have made terrible choices in
the past and are now trying to rebuild their lives. For example, one
of his clients is a teacher who got arrested for drug possession.
She lost her teaching job and her teaching certification was
revoked. She is now clerking at a 7-11 trying to get by. Another
of his clients was a successful stockbroker who lost everything
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when he got arrested for his 2nd DUI. When I’ve sat in on his
group counseling sessions, I’m amazed with how normal all of his
clients seem. Once they start talking about how their lives were
affected by their bad choices, you realize how quickly life can
change. Many of them thought, “It’s not going to happen to me,”
but it did.
If you have the opportunity to work for yourself selling your
product, consider it a gift. You may never again get such an
opportunity.
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"Success is achieved and maintained
by those who try and keep trying."
W. Clement Stone
Chapter 3
Can your invention be successful?
I believe your invention can be successful if you can make a
working prototype to prove it works, make it yourself costeffectively and find customers for it. If you work hard, word of
mouth will start, your sales will grow, and you will start to build a
great brand. There’s an old saying, “The harder you work, the
luckier you get.”
One famous inventor is Ron Popeil of Ronco. Mr. Popeil worked
on his business 7 days a week when he was starting out. That is an
amazing work ethic. With sales of his Pocket Fisherman,
Showtime Rotisserie, Chop-O-Matic, and dozens of other
successful products, Mr. Popeil built a legacy around his solid
work ethic.
Another TV personality you may have seen is the late Billy Mays.
Who can forget the Oxy Clean commercials in which Billy turns a
cylinder of dirty water clean and clear by swirling Oxy Clean soap
powder in? In 2009, Billy’s partner Anthony Sullivan wrote an
online article called Pitchman Tips for Making Millions that has
valuable advice for inventors who want to sell their product on
direct-response TV. Although few inventors will ever have their
products sold on TV, Mr. Sullivan has some good advice. Here are
some of his points:
1. Is it easy to demonstrate?
In other words, can you show what the product does? It has to be
easily demonstrated or it will be hard to sell.
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2. Does it solve a common problem? The most popular products
are those that are a simple, inexpensive solution to an everyday
problem. These would be labor or time savers for consumers. An
example would be the Post-It note by 3M. This allows a user to
put a note on something and easily remove it with no sticky residue
remaining.
3. Does it have a “WOW” factor? There's got to be a visual
"WOW" factor that will capture the customer’s attention and make
them want to purchase. Think of Apple’s iPod®. The iPod
replaces your bulky CD and DVD players, can store thousands of
your favorite songs and a few movies, and yet is small enough to
fit in your pocket. There is also Apple’s iPhone®. Can you say
WOW?
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Chapter 4
Should you license your invention to another company?
A common question that new inventors ask me is whether they
should manufacture and sell their product themselves, as I have
done, or license their product for a royalty to an outside company.
Most inventors think that it would be easier to license their
invention to an outside manufacturer for a royalty. These
inventors may not have considered that whether you are selling
your product to a retail customer or licensing it to an outside
company, you still need to have a finished, retail ready product. A
potential licensor will not be interested if all you have is a rough
prototype and no track record or sales data for the product.
Potential licensors want to see that you’ve perfected your
prototype and manufactured it in retail ready form. They also want
to see evidence that you developed marketing materials and had
some success at retail or wholesale marketing.
Most prospective licensors require you to have a patent
Most licensors won’t even consider talking about licensing your
invention unless you own a full Utility Patent. That is the
expensive Utility Patent, not the $110 Provisional Patent
Application. This means that you would have to invest money in
both making a retail-ready product AND spend thousands of
dollars on a patent for the benefit of making a low (2% to 5%)
license royalty on your product.
Since Patent Attorneys promote the importance of the “priority
date” of your invention, you’d be required to pay for the high
expense of a patent immediately after inventing the product,
without any guarantee that you’d be reimbursed by a licensor.
There is also no guarantee you’d be able to find a licensor.
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Other issues regarding potential licensors
Outside companies may not be willing to discuss licensing your
invention due to the possibility of future litigation. Many
companies have a “Not Invented Here (NIH)” policy that prevents
licensing outside inventor’s products.
Even if you are able to find a potential licensor of your invention,
you won’t be receiving an advance royalty to defray your
manufacturing, packaging or patenting upfront costs. Other issues
to consider are that licensors will not risk much money in an
unproven, non-manufactured product. Licensors seldom will agree
to pay you a minimum annual royalty, or agree to any annual sales
minimums. In the collegiate licensing market, for example, a $500
annual royalty at 8% is guaranteeing $6,250 in annual sales.
Since most licensees have not had any sales of their product,
licensors will use a pessimistic forecast model. There is also no
guarantee that your licensor would even market or promote your
product. They might bind you to a multi-year licensing agreement
but then shelve your product, never marketing or advertising it.
A Patent Attorney’s Cost/Benefit Analysis of Licensing
A Georgia Patent Attorney and blogger named Robert Platt Bell,
aforementioned on page 22, wrote a paper entitled “Should I Get a
Patent?” In Section 1 of this article, Mr. Bell writes:
“In order to make patenting worthwhile, there needs to be at least
a potential of $500,000 or more in royalties available. This is a
somewhat arbitrary number, and perhaps on the low side. A
litigator might argue a million dollars or more is needed to make it
worthwhile.*
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The reason is simple. If someone wants to copy your idea, it can
cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, to enforce your
patent. Even a contingency fee law firm will want to see some big
numbers before taking on your case. There are many good and
valuable products out there that can be protected by a patent, but
probably shouldn’t. If the product has a limited market for sales
and no major royalty base, a U.S. Patent may be little more than a
wall plaque.”
*At the industry standard 5% royalty to the licensee, royalties of
$500,000 to $1 million imply annual sales by the licensor of $10
million to $20 million.
Licensing has less than a 1 in 7 chance for success
In a 2006 Forbes Magazine article entitled “Should You License
or Produce Your Invention?”Authors Ed Zimmer and Ron
Westrum revealed that only 13% of inventors who attempted to
license their invention were successful. Since the average royalty a
licensor would pay to an inventor is 5%, this article suggests that
an inventor has a 13% chance to make a 5% license royalty.
Conversely, inventors who made and sold their products
themselves enjoyed a success rate closer to 50%. That is a 50%
chance for an inventor to keep 100% of the profits.
The math shows licensing doesn’t benefit the inventor
Let’s assume your product retails for $50 and the gross profit for
each unit sold is $20. A standard license royalty paid to an
inventor is 5% of gross sales, meaning the licensor keeps the other
95%. Thus, for the sale of one unit, the licensor would keep
$47.50 and you would receive just $2.50.
A 5% royalty is a very bad deal for an inventor. If this were a
bank loan, that would be like paying your licensor 95% interest.
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That is bad business, especially since it is your product, your
knowledge and your passion that went into creating the invention.
Since you have to invest money in creating a finished, retail-ready
product, and since the finished product will be the sole result of
your financial investment and creativity, why give away 95% of
the profits to a licensor? No other person or company will promote
your product or market it with the passion that you would. In my
opinion and experience with Storm Stoppers, I recommend you
manufacture and sell your product yourself & keep 100% of the
profits.
A profit comparison of manufacturing versus licensing
To help you understand how invention license agreements favor
and benefit the licensor, let’s assume you want to make $20,000 in
profit in the first 3 years of selling your invention at retail. Let’s
also assume that your costs in product development to have a
manufactured, retail-ready product to sell include:
Creating product & packaging/basic inventory:
Miscellaneous marketing costs:
Initial Manufacturing Costs of Product:
$ 9,000
$ 1,000
$10,000
Utility Patent Application & first Office Action: $ 9,000
Since licensors require that you have filed for a full Utility Patent,
in the above example, your initial costs would be $19,000 if you
want to license your product. If you would be making and selling
your product yourself, your initial costs would be just $10,000.
If your goal was to make $20,000 in profit over the initial
packaging and marketing costs, you’d need to gross $30,000
(profit plus initial costs) making it yourself and $39,000 if you
were planning to license your invention.
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Let’s assume each unit retails for $50 and costs you $30 to make,
netting a $20 per unit profit. Further assume that you are making
each unit to order, and pay the $30 unit cost out of each sale.
The chart below shows the number of units you would need to sell
to gross $30,000 (making it yourself) or $39,000 (licensing it to
another company):
Scenario 1: You manufacture & sell your product yourself:
Profit to you: 100% of Gross Profit or $20 per unit
Units need to be sold to gross $30,000:
1,500
Scenario 2: You license your product to an outside company:
Profit to you: 5% of Sales or $2.50 per unit
Units need to be sold to gross $39,000:
15,600
What should you do?
Your decision on whether to manufacture your product yourself or
license it depends on how entrepreneurial you are, as well as if you
are willing to allow a licensor to make a lot of money at your
expense.
As you can see by the examples above, in the first 3 years of
selling a new invention, I believe it is far more likely for you to
sell 1,500 units than for a prospective licensor to sell 15,600. To
sell that many units in just 3 years, the licensor would have to
aggressively market and advertise your product. This is unlikely to
happen. A new licensor is not going to put much money or time
into marketing an unproven product.
The benefit of selling these 1,500 units yourself is that the high
profit you make gives you immediate capital to repay your $10,000
upfront costs. For instance, if you sell 500 units the first year at
$50 each, you would gross $25,000. Your cost of goods sold is
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$15,000 (500 units X $30 cost each), and your profit is $10,000.
This $10,000 profit pays all of your $10,000 development costs,
and in the first year. If you borrowed the $10,000 originally, you
would pay off this loan the first year and owe very little interest.
If you sold 500 units again the 2nd and 3rd years, you would clear
another $10,000 in profit per year, meeting your $20,000 profit
goal in only two years.
Conversely, if your licensor sells an average of 500 units per year,
it would take 16 years for you to make your $20,000 profit goal.
Because most licensors will require you to invest money upfront in
patents, will only license a finished, retail-ready product AND only
pay you pennies on the dollar in license fees, I recommend you
manufacture and sell your product yourself and stay away from
licensing. Licensing deals favor and benefit the licensor, NOT the
licensee.
If you must license your product to another company, do one
thing first:
If you make and sell your product initially, you’ll have much more
negotiating leverage to secure a large licensing fee than if you had
licensed your product outright from the beginning. Plus, you’ll
have a lot of manufacturing, marketing and sales knowledge to sell
to your new Licensor.
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Chapter 5
The 4 steps of creating a successful invention
Most inventions originate as an idea or as a solution to an existing
problem. Ideas for products can come to you at all times. You
could be in the grocery store, at the gym or even asleep. A good
habit to get into is to write all your product ideas down. I get ideas
all the time. Some of my best ideas happen throughout the day at
inconsequential times. If you don’t immediately write them down,
you will forget them. Start carrying a composition book and a pen
with you wherever you go. If you have a smart phone, send an
email or a text to yourself with your product idea.
After you have your product idea written down, do some product
research. Do online searches for the product to see if it already
exists. If it is a sporting goods product, call sporting goods stores
and ask if they carry it. Call businesses that carry this type of
product. Act like it exists and you are trying to buy it. Do a
hypothetical focus group with friends and family and see if they
would buy it if it existed. Determine if there’s a need and a void in
the market that your invention would fill.
If you cannot find an existing product and you feel that there is
potential in the market for manufacturing and selling your
invention, here are my 4 steps of inventing a successful product:
1) Write your product idea down and research it; (referenced
above)
2) Make a working prototype and demonstrate that your
invention works;
3) Examine your costs and the likely selling price to make sure
you can sell your product at a profit;
4) Manufacture and sell your product to your first retail or
wholesale customer.
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STEP 2: Make a prototype and demonstrate that it works
The most important step after writing your invention idea down is
to build a working prototype. This will prove that it works and
will also give you knowledge of the components that go into the
product, the cost of these components, and the cost of labor in
assembling those components into your finished product.
New inventors frequently ask me how they can manufacture a
product. The whole process seems daunting. As you will read in
Chapter 6, you need to break down what a manufacturer really IS.
A manufacturer is simply an assembler of components into a
finished product. The answer to “How do I manufacture my
product?” is based on the components that go into it. If your
product is made of molded plastic, you would get a mold made. If
your product is made of die-cut sheet plastic like my collegiate
wheel covers, you would find a supplier of sheet plastic and make
a die, among other steps.
The name I trademarked for my collegiate wheel cover invention
was Clever Covers. This was short for “Clever Wheel Covers.”
Clever Covers were made of die cut PVC plastic that attached
directly to the wheel lip (the thin flat outer rim of the wheel) with
3M Dual Lock fasteners. See the photos below:
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I manufactured Clever Covers by finding suppliers of the
following components and services that went into the finished
product:
•
•
•
•
•
•
White PVC Plastic that was 1/16” thick;
3M Dual Lock fastener pairs, each ½” x 1.5” long;
UV screen printing of a colorful logo onto the plastic;
Alcohol wipes to clean the wheel;
Air stem extensions so you wouldn’t have to remove the
Clever Cover to add air;
Die cutting the plastic into circles in 14, 15, 16 & 17”
wheel sizes. The die cutting also cut out the hole for the
tire’s air stems. (This air stem hole is visible in the 11
o’clock position on the Georgia wheel covers, on the lower
right corner, of the previous page.)
Testing Clever Covers on the highway
To prove that my Clever Covers idea could work, I bought a sheet
of PVC plastic and cut a circle big enough to fit the 15” wheels of
my pickup truck. To mount the plastic to the wheels, I searched
for a fastener similar to hook and loop Velcro, for easy-on-and-off.
I knew fabric Velcro wasn’t strong enough nor weatherproof, so I
searched for a plastic, industrial-strength matable fastener.
I found the industrial strength fastener I was seeking in a trade
magazine called Adhesives Age. This magazine had a feature
story about a product called 3M Dual Lock. 3M Dual Lock is
made of thousands of plastic, interlocking mushroom head
fasteners on one side, with a very strong, all weather adhesive on
the other side under a protective plastic liner. 3M Dual Lock’s
interlocking mushroom heads offer very high shear (side-to-side)
and tensile (pulling) strength compared to hook and loop fasteners.
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3M sent me a graph comparing the two types of 3M Dual Lock I
was considering using, to hook and loop fasteners. Seeing them
side-by-side, you would instantly see that plastic, interlocking 3M
Dual Lock is MUCH stronger than fabric hook and loop Velcro.
Tensile Strength needed to dislodge (shown in lbs/square inch)
Dual Lock Type 1:
Dual Lock Type 2:
3M Dual Lock
used in Storm
Stoppers
43 lbs per square inch
Hook and
Loop/Velcro
fasteners
Difference
3M Dual Lock’s Product 1
is almost 4 times stronger
than hook and loop.
3M Dual Lock’s Product 2
is almost 6 times stronger
than hook and loop
The article talked about 3M Dual Lock being a replacement for
screws and rivets at General Motors, and also that it was used to
hold E-Passes on windshields and front bumpers. It sounded much
stronger than Velcro, yet would offer the same easy-on-and-off
option.
I was intrigued and bought some 3M Dual Lock. I fastened four of
the 3M Dual Lock fasteners to my driver’s side rear wheel and
their four mates to the newly cut plastic panel, which I then
mounted to the wheel and locked into place. I tested the plastic
panel on the driver’s side rear wheel so I could easily see it in the
side view mirror as I drove.
I then drove at varying speeds, from 20 mph up to 70 mph,
including a long trip down the highway. In the mirror, I could see
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the flash of white spinning on the wheel. This showed that my
wheel cover invention was staying on at highway speeds. My
invention worked as I had hoped.
Further testing on a racecar
Although the wheel cover stayed on at highway speeds, I needed to
test them on a racecar to prove they wouldn’t come off at really
high speeds. I convinced the owner of the Richard Petty Driving
Experience at Walt Disney World to put a set of my black and gold
spiral wheel covers on a racecar on his track. He had me install
them on the yellow and black #3 racecar, which was on loan to
Disney from Racing Champion Dale Earnhardt.
The #3 car warmed up on the track, doing over 10 laps and peaked
at a top speed exceeding 140 mph. When it came back, I knew that
I had a product with potential, as I had proved that my wheel cover
invention worked at very high speeds.
STEP 3: Review your costs and make sure you can
make a profit
The third step in inventing a successful product is to find out all
the costs, including your labor, to make it. You also need to
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research the highest possible price you can sell it for. With my
collegiate golf car wheel covers, I created a spreadsheet of my
“Total Costs & Selling Price.” This summarized the printing and
packaging costs to make a set of 4 and looked like this:
Golf Car Clever Covers Total Costs & Selling Price:
Quantity
Total
Costs
Wholesale Gross
Price
Profit
25 sets --1 color
25 sets --2 colors
25 sets --3 colors
$16.00
$22.00
$28.00
$28.00
$28.00
$28.00
$12.00
$6.00
$0.00
50 sets --1 color
50 sets --2 colors
50 sets --3 colors
$11.20
$14.20
$17.20
$28.00
$28.00
$28.00
$16.80
$13.80
$10.80
As you can see, screen printing just 25 sets gave me very little
profit in 1 or 2 colors. Printing in 3 colors, I didn’t make any
profit. Also, as the number of screen printed colors increased, my
profit decreased. To be able to make any decent profit, I really had
to make 50 sets.
I tried and failed to sell my collegiate wheel covers product to the
retail, end-use customer. My true market, I learned, was selling to
a wholesale distributor. These distributors were collegiate product
retailers such as The Gator Shop in Gainesville, FL, and
Seminole Fever in Tallahassee, FL. These stores were located
near major college campuses. As a result of selling at wholesale,
my margins were much lower than if I had been successful in
selling directly to the end-use retail customer.
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Create your own materials cost & selling price worksheet
You should create a similar spreadsheet showing all your costs, as
well as the likely selling price. Remember to add in your assembly
labor, as labor is one of the costs of your product, even if it is your
labor. You are in business to make a profit. You also need to
determine if the majority of your business will be wholesale to
resellers or direct to your retail end-use customer. In my
experience, the way to make the most money as an inventor is to
manufacture your product yourself and sell it direct to the retail
public. This will depend on your market. Your product may only
sell through wholesale distribution channels, as my Clever Covers
collegiate wheel cover product did.
The first personal computer company to adopt the
manufacturer direct to retail sales model
The direct to retail approach is what Dell Computer Founder
Michael Dell is famous for pioneering in the personal computer
business. Mr. Dell started college in 1984 at the University of
Texas as a pre-med student, but soon started a business out of his
dorm room selling random-access memory (RAM) chips and disk
drives for IBM PCs. Mr. Dell resold his inventory through
newspapers and computer magazines at 10-15% below retail.
By 1984, Mr. Dell's dorm room computer components business
was grossing about $80,000 a month. This was enough to
persuade him to drop out of college and sell IBM-compatible
Personal Computers (PCs) under the brand name PCs Limited.
Mr. Dell sold his machines directly to consumers, rather than
through retail outlets, as most computer manufacturers did at the
time. By eliminating the typical wholesale middleman and selling
direct to the customer, Mr. Dell could sell his own PCs at about
40% of the price of an IBM PC. Mr. Dell believed that by selling
personal computer systems directly to customers, PCs Limited
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could better understand customers' needs and provide the most
effective computing solutions to meet those needs.
Mr. Dell’s unique approach of selling made-to-order personal
computers direct to the public was a first and propelled his
company to hundreds of millions of dollars in retail sales. Dell
Computer is now a billion dollar company with 46,000 employees
worldwide. Dell Computer is a great lesson in the wisdom of
manufacturing and selling your invention yourself.
(Author’s note: in all the news articles about Dell Computer’s
beginnings, there are no mentions of Dell waiting for patent protection
before selling their first computer. All of their marketing and innovation
seemed focused on building a great computer brand.)
STEP 4: Manufacture and sell your product to your
first retail customer.
The final step in inventing a successful product is to sell your
product to your first retail or wholesale customer.
Since my market was college fans and my first licensed university
was the University of Central Florida (UCF), I manufactured sets
of my wheel covers with UCF’s logo and colors. I got a sales cart,
put my UCF wheel covers on the wheels and direct marketed my
UCF Clever Covers to UCF fans. My best sales method was to
find tailgaters outside the Citrus Bowl stadium in Orlando on
Saturdays during football season. There were ample cars, trucks
and vans there and tailgating fans loved to decorate their vehicles.
I also advertised in UCF Alumni magazines and joined the Knights
Booster UCF Alumni club, attending their monthly meetings.
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My first retail customer
My very first UCF wheel covers customer was Steve Bell of
Orlando. Steve is a proud alumnus of UCF and loved to decorate
his car. He had car magnets and window flags; UCF wheel covers
were the next logical product for him.
Steve bought multiple sets of my UCF wheel covers for friends
and family, and referred me to other rabid UCF fans who became
customers. Steve and his wife Diane are pictured below with the
very first set of UCF wheel covers I ever sold. In a UCF contest,
he won a “Best Decorated Car” award, and I’d like to think my
UCF wheel covers were part of the reason.
Find your first customer
Once you have created your own product, proved that it works and
demonstrated you can make profit in manufacturing it, your first
sale should be easy. You market where you expect to find your
customers. It is only a matter of time before you find your first
customer.
If you have to, sell your working prototype. Don’t worry about
having sold it. You are the new manufacturer and can make more.
As Jay Leno said in those old Doritos commercials, “Crunch all
you want….we’ll make more!”
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CAUTION: Don’t over invest in inventory
Once you start manufacturing and selling your product, you may
run into temptations to buy a lot of inventory, so you make greater
profit margins. As the cost summary spreadsheet on my Clever
Covers product illustrates, the more wheel covers I produced, the
lower my costs, and the higher my profit. But if I purchased too
much inventory, I could get stuck with more than I could sell. This
is where I learned that over investing in inventory can really hurt
your business.
Instead of investing in additional inventory, I suggest you arrange
with your suppliers for fast delivery times from the factory or
supply house to you. This would allow you to keep your inventory
levels low and conserve your working capital. Putting money into
a reasonable, 30 day supply of inventory is smart; buying six
months worth of inventory because of a special price is not.
Exceptions to my 4 rules of a successful invention:
If you can’t make a prototype and prove your product works (Step
2), or make your product at a low cost to sell it at a profit (Step 3),
you need to invent something else. For instance, if your invention
works, but it would cost you $100,000 to manufacture it and you
don’t have $100,000, you’ll never be able to sell it. You can’t sell
what you cannot manufacture.
If it doesn’t work, then the other steps are irrelevant. Finally, if
you build it, but your market is very small or unprofitable, then
you have little chance of building a business around it. That was
the challenge with my collegiate wheel covers invention. I was
able to manufacture them cost effectively, but there was such a
small seasonal market for them with college fans, it was hard for
me to pay my bills and build a successful, year-round business.
But, as you will read in Chapter 9, I was persistent, stuck with my
product and it eventually led to my invention of Storm Stoppers!
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Chapter 6
How to manufacture your product yourself
In my experience, manufacturing a product has a lot of details but
it can be done by anyone with common sense and entrepreneurial
initiative. The inventor is the best candidate to manufacture his
product. I manufacture and sell my product myself and you can
too!
You need to simplify the concept of manufacturing down to its
roots. A manufacturer is really just an assembler of component
parts into a finished product. A manufacturer sources many
components (some made by them and some made by other
companies), identifies the suppliers of those components, buys
them and assembles everything into a finished product. They then
put their name brand on the product and sell it to their customers.
Not all products made of plastic are made of molded plastic,
nor are manufactured overseas
For instance, if your product is made out of plastic, you may have
to create a mold. Many companies go overseas to buy inexpensive
molds. However, not all products made of plastic need to be made
from a mold. For instance, my Storm Stoppers product is made of
flat sheets of translucent, corrugated plastic and is secured to
window frames with 3M Dual Lock fasteners.
In 2004 when I began manufacturing Storm Stoppers, I needed to
find many suppliers for my product’s components. These
components include the white fabric removal handles, the vinyl
location labels, the plastic, fasteners and our 2.25” and 4.5” 3M
Dual Lock Fastener spacers. My ability to identify these suppliers
and buy quality components from each of them has been a large
part of our success with the Storm Stoppers brand.
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Manufacturers that assemble parts made by others into a
finished product are everywhere
There are many manufacturers who make very few of the
components that go into their finished products. For example,
Ford Motor Company has many factories where they produce
brand new cars, pickup trucks and vans. Ford may manufacture
the engines and transmissions; however they do not make all the
parts that go into their vehicles. Goodyear or Michelin makes the
tires, Delco makes the batteries, Sony or Pioneer makes the
stereos, etc.
Despite not making the tires, battery, steel, aluminum, stereo and
many other parts, Ford Motor Company is considered the
Manufacturer. Ford merely assembles components, some made inhouse and others made by other companies, into a finished product
that is sold under the Ford brand.
As this example illustrates, a manufacturer is simply an assembler
of component parts that make up a product. To recap,
manufacturing your product yourself is a 5 step process that most
people can learn to do. These steps are to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Identify the components that go into your product.
Find suppliers of those components.
Buy the components from these suppliers.
Assemble the components into your finished product.
Put your name brand on your assembled product & sell it to
your retail or wholesale customers.
Follow these 5 steps and YOU
will be the manufacturer!
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Chapter 7
Be in business to sell your product, not your company
Be in business for the long term
You need to be in business for the long term, not the short term.
The mindset of many inventors is that, if their product is good
enough, someone will buy them out right away. I’m not aware of
any product that gets to be successful without a huge amount of
work and financial risk by the owner. This is my 9th year in the
Storm Stoppers business. Despite millions in past sales and
thousands of satisfied customers, we have only begun to reach the
true sales potential! In my opinion, you should be in business to
sell your product, not your company. Keep your company as a
lasting legacy for your kids and family. Building a great company
that sells quality, valued products will make you feel wonderful.
Bill Gates is a long-term businessman
If you are fortunate enough to have a great invention, and are
making and selling it yourself, your brand will be worth far less in
the beginning than if you persist with your product and build a
great brand over time. Think about the famous Billionaire Bill
Gates, co-founder of Microsoft.
Imagine if Mr. Gates were to have sold his company early on. He
may have gotten a large amount at that time. However, he wisely
did not. Instead, he created distribution agreements that packaged
his operating system with every new IBM personal computer sold.
His company created new products such as the Windows
Operating System, Microsoft Office and website development
programs like Microsoft Front Page. Because Mr. Gates &
Microsoft were in business for the long term, Mr. Gates is now one
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of the world’s richest men, Microsoft is a worldwide brand, and
the company is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Some Patent Attorneys promote a short term mentality
Some Patent Attorneys suggest that inventors should “invest” in
filing Utility Patents so that they have “assets” to package with the
anticipated sale of the company. Noted Patent Attorney Gene
Quinn, owner of the www.ipwatchdog.com website that I
mentioned in Chapter 1, wrote an online article in 2008 entitled
“Don’t Get a Patent? Plainly Ridiculous.”
On page 2 of his article, he writes:
“Many inventors want to obtain a patent and then try and
negotiate either a sale of the patent or a licensing deal whereby the
inventor obtains royalty payments moving forward. You can sell
your patent, or even your patent application, or license your patent
or your patent application, because there is an identifiable asset
that has been created. There is simply no way that you are going
to be able to sell or license your invention without having at a
minimum filed a patent application. You simply do not have an
asset that anyone is going to be willing to pay for if you do not
have some kind of exclusive right or at least the prospect of an
exclusive right. People and companies just do not pay for ideas,
no matter how good the idea may seem to you.”
Mr. Quinn is right when he writes that people and companies do
not pay for ideas, but I disagree when he says that you won’t be
able to sell your invention without a patent. Your customers are
going to pay you for your valuable and useful branded product, not
your product idea. Mr. Quinn doesn’t address the expensive
roadblocks that the Patent Office uses to deny original inventors.
There are many products in existence that do not have any patent
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protection whatsoever, but have such a recognizable brand name
that is first in the mind of the customer.
Starbucks Coffee comes to mind. Although Starbucks owns
dozens of patents and trademarks, they lack a patent on their basic
coffee recipe. Using Mr. Quinn’s logic, Starbucks shouldn’t have
any customers. The Coca Cola Company is another example.
There is probably a patent on the 100 year old recipe for Coke, but
the company’s brand name and reputation for quality is why Coca
Cola is the world’s #1 brand.*
*Source: 2012’s 13th Annual Best Global Brands Report from Interbrand, a
brand consulting company owned by the Omnicom Group.
Patents aren’t assets that appreciate over time
Another of Mr. Quinn’s statements that is misleading is the
suggestion that an inventor should be thinking of acquiring and
eventually selling a worthless piece of paper, such as a patent.
Patents, as you read in Chapter 1, provide no protection to an
inventor. A patent just gives the inventor the right to sue an
infringer. And, as previously mentioned, the only person that
makes any money in a patent infringement lawsuit is a Patent
Attorney (Mr. Quinn is a Patent Attorney).
The last line of Mr. Quinn’s article is the best reinforcement about
Patent Attorneys’ true motives. It reads, “Those who tell you that
you don’t need a patent and should start the commercialization
process without at least filing a patent application probably have
their own agenda; an agenda that likely does not match up with
what is in your best interests.”
If an inventor wants to know about starting a business, he should
talk to another successful inventor or entrepreneur, not a Patent
Attorney. Patent Attorneys seem to have their own agenda, and it
isn’t always to help inventors.
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Chapter 8
YAGOTTAWANNA
I grew up in Glen Ellyn, which is a western suburb of Chicago,
Illinois. The family next door had 4 kids and each was a talented
athlete. The oldest boy was named Scott and he was a particularly
talented swimmer. I recall Scott always wore swim team t-shirts
with motivational messages. He wore one particular t-shirt all the
time. It had his swim team name on the back and a single word on
the front. This word was YAGOTTAWANNA.
In my opinion, this made up word is the core of self-motivation:
You have to want it. Whatever your goal, you have to want it.
If you want it, you can get it.*
I think about this shirt’s message frequently and you should too.
In your own business selling your product, there will be many
things you may not want to do. Things like waking up at 6 am,
working 12-14 hour days, being at the office or factory 7 days a
week, staying late on a Friday night working on a customer quote,
etc. However, when you want it, it is easy to be motivated to work
toward your goal.
I have learned that the success of an inventor can come down to his
answer to this question: How badly do you want it?
YAGOTTAWANNA!
* There are a few exceptions to this rule, such as winning the lottery, being one
of Oprah’s Favorite Things, dating a Supermodel, etc.
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“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius
will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the
world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve
Calvin Coolidge
the problems of the human race.”
Chapter 9
Be a Persistent S.O.B.
My former Patent Attorney used to tell me, “The key to success as
an inventor is to be a Persistent S.O.B.” The intangible that gives
you the most chance for success is persistence and having faith and
confidence in your decision making.
Think of trying to lose weight. How many people have the
discipline to stick with a diet and exercise program? To succeed
with losing weight, you have to be persistent. In my experience, if
you want to be a successful inventor, you have to be similarly
persistent and have confidence that you will be successful.
I recall reading a biography of Robin Williams, star of “Mrs.
Doubtfire” and dozens of other movies. In his early days while he
was a struggling comedian, his father encouraged him to get
training as a welder as a backup to his comedy career. However,
Robin Williams had confidence in his abilities. His career has
backed that confidence up. Over the last 20 years, he has become
a great comedian, with dozens of acting credits in films as diverse
as Mrs. Doubtfire and The Birdcage, along with millions in
earnings from producing his comedy concerts.
I’m certainly no Robin Williams, but I do share his drive to
succeed. My former Patent Attorney used to tell me I was the most
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persistent S.O.B. he knew. At the low times in my career as a
successful inventor and entrepreneur, others have told me to give
up and get a job working for someone else. However, building my
Storm Stoppers brand is what I want to do. I’m going to stick with
it. There are millions of homeowners in Florida, South Carolina,
Virginia, New York, New Jersey and other states that use plywood.
Since I am persistent, I am confident that one day, homeowners
across the U.S. will be using my Storm Stoppers® The Plywood
Alternative® product to protect their homes during strong storms
and hurricanes.*
Life throws a lot of obstacles in your way. There’s even more
obstacles to deal with as an inventor. Being persistent and having
faith in yourself costs you nothing and can help make you
successful.
As the inspirational author and clergyman Norman Vincent Peale
once said, “Believe in yourself. Have faith in your abilities.
Without confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful
or happy.”
*Author’s Note: If you live in a coastal area affected by hurricanes, please visit
my website www.plywoodalternative.com and request a Storm Stoppers
sample today!
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Chapter 10
Don’t Sue Copycat Competitors
In 2006, as a perk for our retail dealers and their spouses, Storm
Stoppers organized and paid for a Dealer Retreat Weekend at the
fabulous Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando. We paid for the rooms
and meals for approximately 40 guests. This cost my company
about $10,000. This was a sizeable expense for me, but a nice
reward for my loyal retail dealers.
That Saturday, we had a group meeting where each dealer shared
marketing and installation tips with each other. We also had our
attorneys give presentations on their respective legal expertise.
Our former business attorney was there sharing his knowledge, as
was our former patent and litigation attorneys.
In their individual presentations to the group, many of our dealers
complained about various copycat competitors who were copying
our product and advertising and undercutting their retail prices.
Some of these copycat competitors were very bold. They’d run
newspaper ads claiming to be Storm Stoppers, saying that “We
have the Plywood Alternative product you’ve seen on TV.”
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One of the copycats even went so far as to put their product sample
labels directly over ours. When you held it up to the light you
could see our sample label and logo underneath.
Learning the hard, expensive way
These copycats, almost a dozen in all, were hurting our business,
confusing our customers at home shows, cheapening our brand and
hurting our dealers. We talked to our attorneys. They said, “You
should sue.” We talked to our retail dealers, none of whom was an
attorney. They said, “You should sue.”
So we sued. In 2006, we spent $38,000 in legal retainers, at an
average rate of $300 per hour, with our litigation attorney for him
to file three Federal Lawsuits against the three largest copycat
competitors. These were Federal Lawsuits, as we were alleging
Trademark & Copyright Infringement, which are handled by the
Federal Court System. Over the next two years, we spent $6,000
for additional legal retainers.
As a result of the $44,000 in retainers to our litigation attorney for
three Federal Lawsuits, the first two copycat companies we sued
settled with us for $500 each. This combined $1,000 went straight
to our attorney for his legal fees. Both companies went out of
business within six months of being served with our lawsuit.
Filing the lawsuits against these two easily cost more than 20 times
the $1,000 we recovered.
The third lawsuit was the one I referred to in Chapter 1. This
copycat was represented by an insurance company whose high
priced “fee churning” litigation attorney milked the case for all it
was worth. This lawsuit was against a copycat company that had
started off as one of our authorized retail dealers in 2005. In 2006,
they decided to start their own business selling a knockoff Storm
Stoppers product, using an identical copy of our logo to market
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their storm protection business. Since we were Patents Pending at
the time, we sued them under the Lanham Act for infringing on the
Registered Federal Trademark of our logos. The Lanham Act is
the primary Federal Trademark Statute of Law in the United
States.
Ironically, it came out in the Discovery Interrogatories that this
company’s General Liability Insurance Policy, which we required
our dealers to maintain, had an “Advertising Injury Protection”
clause. This clause provided for an attorney to defend them at no
cost. The further irony was that they had this General Liability
Insurance Policy only as a result of our contractual rules to our
retail dealers. As the expression goes, “No good deed goes
unpunished.”
“Fee Churning” Attorneys will run up your legal bills
While we were using tens of thousands of dollars in company
profits to fund this third Federal Lawsuit, this copycat infringer
didn’t have to pay anything to have an expensive law firm use
legal maneuvers to extend the lawsuit with depositions, motions,
hearings, etc. The more work they did, the more they could bill the
insurance company paying for the copycat’s defense.
This is known as “fee churning,” and our litigation attorney
explained to us that this is a common law firm strategy when its
bills are paid by a client with deep pockets, such as an insurance
company. All this legal posturing and strategies by the defense
ended up costing us a lot of time and money.
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Copycat Competitors with Chutzpah
Compare the photos below and you can see how customers would
be easily confused by seeing the copycat’s logo. Our trademarked
logo is on the right. This company exactly copied our Federal
Trademarks. They were able to do this as we had given them
access to our Trademarked logo when they were our licensed
wholesale dealer. They copied our Stylized S® Trademark and
our Plywood Alternative® Trademark with “instead of plywood.”
They used our Stylized S as the first letter in both words, just like
our registered logo, in the same red and black primary colors. The
humorous part is they misspelled PANELS with an extra N.
Their banner from a home show:
Our Trademarked Logo:
After months of depositions and other legal maneuvers designed to
stretch out the case and cost the insurance company even more
money, the fee churning law firm agreed to pay us $30,000.
However, the bill from our litigation attorney came to $35,000.
Within four months after the legal matter was settled, this copycat
competitor went out of business.
Shortly thereafter, we also recovered $4,000 from an unrelated
matter in which a company was using our Plywood Alternative®
Trademark. See Appendixes C-E. This $4,000 in settlement
money went straight to our attorney for his legal fees.
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In a lawsuit, only your attorney makes money
Our company spent over $79,000 on legal fees for a useless
Federal Judgment against several copycat competitors who quickly
went out of business. Our attorney then bragged that we had
accomplished something. He told us that we had injunctions that
we could use to discourage the next copycat. As if a future
copycat is going to be afraid of a worthless piece of paper.
Spending over $79,000 helped me learn three valuable lessons
about suing a copycat competitor:
1. Most copycat competitors are in business for the short term, the
“fast money.” They are not focused on good customer service or in
building a brand. DON’T SUE THEM—they will go out of business
soon enough.
2. In a lawsuit, only attorneys make money.
3. In a lawsuit, only attorneys make money
Learn from my experience
Don’t file a patent or trademark infringement lawsuit against a
copycat. Litigation is a game and the only one who benefits is the
attorney. In my experience, the average inventor cannot win.
An inventor is risking his personal credit rating and personal
assets, not to mention his relationships with his wife and kids. To
beat a copycat competitor, give your customers a better product,
better warranty and great customer service. Wait patiently for the
copycat to go out of business. Focus on making your company and
product first in the customer’s mind.
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Chapter 11
Attorneys are like Pac-Man. They will
eat up your money and be hungry for more.
Companies cannot represent themselves in court
According to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, in civil court
cases against an individual, the individual has the choice of
representing himself. They call this “Pro Se.”
In a civil case against a company, the owner or company
representative does not get the same choice of representing the
company in court proceedings. An attorney is required to
represent the company. This requirement makes lawsuits against
companies expensive to prosecute and defend.
Wasting company profits on lawsuits
Between suing copycat competitors, paying our Patent Attorney to
file for several patents, and paying our business attorney for
various issues, I estimate we spent over $100,000 in legal fees to
attorneys from 2005 to 2010.
In my experience, attorneys are great at looking sharp with the
latest in suit technology, researching obscure laws and taking your
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money in advance retainers. However, attorneys are not great at
providing small businesses or inventors good advice, at a
reasonable price, to start and grow their businesses. Attorneys are
also a drain on capital. In my experience, any advice an attorney
suggests is always going to be for his firm’s financial interests
first.
Filing an infringement lawsuit against a copycat competitor, as you
read in the previous chapter, is a bad idea. The only person that
makes money in a lawsuit is your attorney. For instance, my
former Patent Attorney charges $375 per hour. 200 hours, or 5
weeks of his time, would cost $75,000. That’s more than what
most school teachers and police officers make in a year.
Attorneys are like a bottomless cup that you keep pouring money
into. Most patent or litigation attorneys charge at least $300 per
hour. Working a 40 hour workweek, that is $12,000 per week they
could bill you. If you make $10 in profit for each unit you sell,
you’d have to sell 1,200 units just to pay for one week of their
billable time. That is far too much to pay an advisor.
If you give an attorney a $5,000 retainer, he will eat it up like a Pac
Man and give you a bill for another $5,000 or more.
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The word “attorney” may be Latin for “I need a bigger boat”
Most TV commercials have an attorney who is “working for you”
decked out in his $4,000 suit and standing in front of bookcases
filled with legal books. Those ads should really say “For the
money,” because money is what it is about when you are dealing
with many attorneys.
Attorneys don’t make money unless they have something to bill
clients for. Thus, the first loyalty an attorney will have is to his
billable hourly legal fees. The needs of the client may be a distant
second. As the cartoon below humorously illustrates, many
attorneys are:
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Chapter 12
“Badass” Federal Judgments are impossible to collect
As you recall from Chapter 10, in 2006 my company filed three
Federal Lawsuits against three copycat competitors. As a result of
one of the copycat defendants’ defaulting at trial, my company
received a $108,125 Federal Judgment. However, collecting this
amount turned out to be impossible, as the main Judgment Debtor
is “Judgment proof.” In my experience, a Federal Judgment is
another worthless piece of paper. Federal Judgments will cost you
more in attorneys’ and collection fees to collect than you will ever
recover from the Judgment Debtor.
Judgment-proof debtor
After receiving the Judgment, we were told by the Judgment
Debtor’s attorney that his client “had no money.” My investigator
found out otherwise. This Judgment Debtor is a very rich man
with substantial assets. He owns a Class A Motor Home, which is
a luxury 40 foot long RV. This vehicle is worth about $130,000.
He also owns four single family homes, all paid for, and several
new SUVs. Unfortunately for me, his personal property and real
estate assets are outside the reach of my $108,125 Federal
Judgment. This is because the Judgment Debtor is married, but my
Judgment is only against him. My former litigation attorney didn’t
file the Federal Trademark infringement lawsuit against this guy
and his wife, who were in business together.
In the State of Florida, married couples are given a “Tenancy by
the Entireties” Common Law assumption regarding their joint
assets. This means that a creditor of either the husband or wife
cannot levy on assets owned in both their names. This puts their
marital assets, such as these four homes and the RV, outside of the
reach of my Federal Judgment. Since this Judgment Debtor has
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the most assets of the remaining defendants, my only hope of
collecting the $108,125 Federal Judgment rested in levying his
assets. Thanks to the Tenancy by the Entireties protection and the
fact that my Judgment is only against the Judgment Debtor, his
jointly held marital assets are “Judgment Proof.”
On top of the Tenancy by the Entireties issue, collecting a
judgment on your own can be frustrating and expensive. From
2008 to 2010, I spent over $3,000 of my limited funds on process
and service fees to garnish this Judgment Debtor’s personal bank
account which was in his name only. My efforts resulted in a bank
garnishment for $3,900, which went straight to my attorney for his
legal fees.
My “Badass” Federal Judgment is below. Hopefully it won’t leap
off the page, attack you and take all your money.
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Missing Chapter 13
Out of a concern for my
future good luck, I skipped
writing a Chapter 13. The
number 13 is thought to be
bad luck.
Many high rise hotels and
buildings are superstitious
regarding the number 13.
The next time you are in a
skyscraper’s elevator, you
will notice that Floor 13 is
frequently skipped.
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Chapter 14
Find a good attorney at a reasonable price
If you need an affordable attorney, hire a recent graduate from
your local accredited law school. I have been able to find
hardworking attorneys from an Orlando-area law school who have
passed the Florida Bar, for under $60 per hour. Recent law school
graduates work hard and have tremendous drive. Most appreciate
the opportunity to make up to $60 per hour, as that is far more than
they are being paid as an entry level associate at their law firm.
To find recent law school graduates in your area, contact your local
law school’s alumni office and tell them what you are looking for.
Use an “Attorney Wanted” job posting form like the sample in
Appendix B and ask them to place it on their bulletin board and
website. Some law schools may even email recent graduates and
have them contact you.
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Chapter 15
Get free support from your local SBDC
There are many Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs)
across the U.S. These offer a variety of services, including
consulting, coaching and seminars, at low or no cost, to small
businesses and entrepreneurs. SBDCs are usually affiliated with a
university or college. Many SBDCs work with an organization
known as SCORE. SCORE (previously known as Service Corps
of Retired Executives) is a network of retired business executives,
leaders and volunteers who provide free and confidential
counseling, mentoring and advice to small business owners
nationwide.
For a SBDC Office near you, please visit The Association of Small
Business Development Centers’ website at www.asbdc-us.org and
put in your zip code/state in the search box located on the lower
right of the homepage.
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Chapter 16
Protect your invention without a patent
There are many ways to protect your product without a patent and
several of them don’t cost anything.
One thing you should consider doing right away is a patent search.
I don’t recommend doing a patent search yourself, as it is a
specialized process involving online and in-person patent searches
that only a Patent Attorney should do. The cost is about $1,000.
Patent Search
A patent search would look for similar inventions to yours and tell
you if someone has already created your invention. If a similar
patented product exists, a patent search should find it. Finding a
similar patented product would allow you to steer clear of possible
infringement of someone else’s patent rights, and could save a
future infringement lawsuit from being filed against you. It could
also show you how to design around or improve the deficiencies or
weaknesses, and incorporate these positive changes into your own
product. In a 2011 radio interview on the Allen Handleman Show,
Patent Attorney Mike Johnston of Morrisville, NC confirmed these
points.
Keyword Search
In addition to hiring a Patent Attorney to do a patent search, you
should do your own Internet keyword search, looking for a similar
product online. By researching various keywords online, you will
learn about products similar to yours that are being sold in similar
markets. For instance, let’s say you invent a grilling accessory that
can burn a corporate logo into chicken, steak and fish while they
are on the grill. Do an internet search for “logo grilling,” “logo
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grill branders,” or “corporate logo grill branding” and see what
the relevant search results are. Let’s say you find no corporate
grill branding products, but you find a company that makes grilling
accessories such as www.grillcharms.com. By calling Grill
Charms’ corporate office, you will learn whether they offer other
products that can be customized for the corporate logo branding of
food. If they do, you may also learn if any of their relevant
products are patented. Many companies will publish their patent
numbers on their website, as well as on the actual product
packaging.
If neither a patent search nor an Internet keyword search locates a
similar product, your invention may have potential. After you’ve
followed the four steps for a successful invention in Chapter 5,
here are 11 ways to protect your product without a patent:
#1 Way to protect your product without a patent
Start marketing your product right away so you can be first
in the customer’s mind
The best way to protect your invention is to get your product into
your customer’s mind first. Be first to market it, so you can be
first in the customer’s mind. This is what I did with Storm
Stoppers and it has worked out very well.
There are some people in the patent industry that would suggest
you protect your product by filing a Utility Patent Application on
your product before you market it. I disagree with that advice. I
have done over $5 million in sales with Storm Stoppers since 2004
without any patent protection. If I had waited to market Storm
Stoppers until I had a patent, I wouldn’t be in business right now. I
wouldn’t have a great brand, thousands of customers or any of the
wonderful experiences that marketing and selling my product right
away has brought me.
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Create a memorable brand name and design a colorful logo
As successful Corona Cigar Company CEO Jeff Borysiewicz of
Orlando says, “Building your brand name is the cornerstone to
your business.” Companies spend lots of time and money
developing advertising strategies to get their brand name thought
of first in the customer’s mind. Companies also spend a lot of
money on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques within
website design, so that when you search for a particular product on
the Internet, their website shows up first.
Some examples of great brand names are Coca Cola, Kentucky
Fried Chicken (KFC) and Chick-Fil-A. While their recipes are
important, these respective brand names stand out and are first in
the customer’s mind. These “first positions in the mind” include
the first cola, the first fast-food fried chicken and the first chicken
sandwich. It is notable that Chik-Fil-A wasn’t the first chicken
sandwich in existence, but it is the first chicken sandwich in the
mind. Other great brand names include Snuggie®, which is the
“first wearable blanket.”
Create a colorful and meaningful logo
Once you have a memorable brand name, you should design a
colorful logo. Target uses a basic red target. I can picture Coke’s
logo (the world famous Coca Cola cursive font), and also Pepsi’s,
which is a red, white and blue ball. One of the world’s largest
online cigar retailers, Corona Cigar Company, has a great logo as
it makes you think of royalty. The word “corona” is Spanish for
“crown,” and this icon is used in the logo. The Corona also is the
highest part of the tobacco leaf, which is fitting, as the company
sells millions of premium cigars per year.
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Color is an important ingredient in your new logo. You should
pick a logo that is as simple and memorable as your brand name,
like those below:
GREAT COMPANY LOGOS:
There are companies that can create a logo for you
If you are not skilled in logo design, there are companies online
who can create a logo for you. They cost an average of $250. The
companies below were featured in a 2009 article in the Wall Street
Journal “Can Logo Services Make Your Mark?”
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File for a Federal Trademark on your brand name
Once you have chosen a brand name and a
logo, you should file a Federal Trademark
application on your brand name and possibly
separate Trademark applications on all the
parts of your logo. My Storm Stoppers logo is
trademarked four ways, so all the individual
parts and words are separately trademarked.
In my experience, your business success will
be a direct result of your great brand name.
“It’s all about building the brand,” says Sean
“Puffy” Combs.
A Federal Trademark is affirmation of your brand name at the
highest level. You can file for a Trademark on your brand name
yourself through www.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/index.jsp.
The filing fees as of January of 2013 are $375 per class.
Advantages of a Federal Trademark over a patent
The reason I recommend filing a Federal Trademark on your brand
name is that, unlike patents, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
(USPTO) does not try to fight you or deny you your brand name
and logo. You pay the filing fee per class of goods, they make sure
someone else hasn’t already registered that mark or name, and if
not, you will get your Federal Trademark registration within six
months to a year and a half.
Even if you get a Federal Trademark, copycat competitors may
steal it. If that happens, you will have to pay an attorney to send
Cease & Desist letters to try to get them to stop. If you cannot
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afford to do this, your Federal Trademark could become another
worthless piece of paper like a patent.
Despite these obstacles, I think that getting a Federal Trademark
on your brand name is a good idea for your branding efforts.
Filing for a Federal Trademark is so affordable so you would be
foolish not to invest in this simple and cost-effective brand name
reinforcement.
State Trademarks could give you a jurisdictional advantage
At the same time you file for a Federal Trademark, you should also
consider filing a State Trademark in the states you do business in.
This may seem a little redundant, but think about it like an
umbrella. A Federal Trademark is very broad, as it covers all 50
states. However, a State Trademark is more specific, so if you get
both, and you have possible Trademark infringers, you don’t
necessarily have to sue the infringer in expensive Federal Court.
You would have the option of filing a Trademark Infringement
lawsuit in State Circuit Court. As I have stated previously, you
don’t want to have to sue an infringer, but suing someone in State
Court could be less costly than Federal Court.
The cost for a State Trademark varies. In Florida, it is $87.50 per
Class of Goods, but every state is different. Check with your
Secretary of State Division of Corporations Office for information.
How to make the ™ or ® after your Brand Name
Once you file for the Federal or State Trademark application, you
can legally put the ™ designation after your brand name and logo
in your marketing materials, on your website and on your
product’s packaging. This ™ logo shows that you have filed for a
Federal Trademark. Having the ™ after your brand name could
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act as a deterrent to any potential infringer or copycat of your
brand name and logo.
Once your Trademark issues, you will be able to use the Registered
® mark on your product and all your marketing materials. If you
are using Microsoft’s Word program, follow the instructions below
to insert these symbols after your logo in your documents. This
may not work for all word processing software, however.
To make these ™ or ® marks in Microsoft Word documents:
1. Type a (TM) or a (R) using parentheses as shown.
2. Once you hit the space after the 2nd parentheses, Microsoft
Word will convert them to the ® or ™ marks as shown.
Share your prototype with others to get valuable feedback
Although many inventors think sharing their prototype with others
would be a recipe for disaster, in my experience sharing your
prototype gives you valuable feedback. This feedback helps you to
improve your product. These product improvements better
position your invention for higher sales.
You need to overcome the fear that some “big company” is going
to steal your invention and cheat you out of the profits. This is an
irrational fear because most companies have in-house R&D
departments with well paid scientists and creative entrepreneurs on
staff whose sole purpose is to brainstorm new product ideas. Many
companies refuse to consider outside sources for products, for the
very real fear of litigation.
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An outside company ripping off your idea is a rare occurrence
In most inventors’ minds, their idea is a future multi-million dollar
selling product and, if they disclose it too early or to the wrong
party, some outside company is going to steal the invention and
cheat the inventor out of his rightful profits.
You may recall “Flash of Genius,” a
2008 movie starring Greg Kinnear. The
movie is based on real life inventor Bob
Kearns’ decades-long legal battle
against Ford Motor Company over
infringement of his intermittent
windshield wiper invention. Early in
the trial, Ford offered a $30 million
settlement to Mr. Kearns. Mr. Kearns rejected it, as he wanted
Ford to publicly acknowledge that they had infringed his invention.
The Jury ruled in favor of Mr. Kearns, but awarded him just $10
million. He never did receive public acknowledgement from Ford
of their infringement. As mentioned in an earlier chapter,
infringers never admit to doing anything wrong, especially if they
have infringed.
In my experience as a multi-million selling inventor, invention
ideas are a dime a dozen. Stories like Ford ripping off the little
guy are a rarity. The Flash of Genius story happened over 30 years
ago. Big companies today know that copying an inventor’s
product would be a public relations nightmare. It would look bad
for a national news show to report that a publicly traded company
copied an independent inventor’s product. Big corporations have
the financial muscle and the staff to create their own innovations.
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Most copycats will be small companies like your own
In my experience, copycats are most likely small companies with
few employees. When Storm Stoppers first experienced success
in 2005 and 2006, there would be several copycats at the same
home show. Some of them were customers who had bought Storm
Stoppers for their homes.
There is a great distance between the idea and the finished product
My experience with Storm Stoppers copycats taught me that there
are many expensive and time-consuming details between an
inventions’ creation and the date that it is sold at retail or
wholesale. A copycat will just wait until the product is successful
and selling, before copying it. Frequently, they will buy your
product and reverse engineer it.
Please see the graph on the next page. This illustrates that you
shouldn’t worry about having your product copied when you first
create it. In my experience, a copycat will knock off your product
when it has been manufactured and is selling well.
The most counterfeited currency in the world is the U.S. Dollar.
Why? Because it is successful. In contrast, one of the least
counterfeited currencies is the Mexican Peso. Like this example, if
your invention is successful, it will get copied. Successful
products, like Apple’s IPad get copied. Unsuccessful products,
like the Yugo automobile do not.
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File a Provisional Patent Application and be able to legally put
“patent pending” on your product for one year
Filing a Provisional Patent Application is an illusion of protection
that is available to an inventor. It is an illusion because a
Provisional Patent Application isn’t reviewed on its merits by the
Patent Office. The government filing fee is $110 and you can
easily do this yourself, without an attorney. Filing a Provisional
Patent Application legally allows you to put “Patent Pending” on
your product, website and marketing materials. You can find an
application at www.uspto.gov. If you spent thousands of dollars
on a full Utility Patent Application, you would also receive this
same benefit of being able to put “Patent Pending” on your
product.
When they see “Patent Pending” on your product, marketing
materials and website, a copycat competitor won’t know whether
you filed the $110 Provisional or the expensive, full Utility Patent
Application. Advertising Patent Pending on your product while
your business is getting established could act as a roadblock to
potential copycats. It could also make your business look better
capitalized than it really is.
The Patent Office files it and forgets it
If you’ve seen inventor Ron Popeil’s commercial for his Showtime
Rotisserie® oven, you should remember there is a popular line
where the audience shouts, “You set it and forget it.” Similar to
this is what happens when you file a Provisional Patent
Application with the Patent Office. The Patent Office doesn’t
review your provisional patent application, issue an Office Action
or review your application claims. They file it and forget it.
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The Provisional Patent Application is valid for one year from the
date of filing. Some attorneys may tell you that you need to
convert the Provisional Patent Application into a full Utility Patent
Application after this one year expiration.
Extending your use of the “Patent Pending” Phrase
If you do not have the money to file for an expensive Utility Patent
Application, but you’d like the benefit of having “Patent Pending”
on your product for more than one year, here is an idea. Let’s say
you file for a $110 Provisional Patent Application for your
invention on January 1 of a given year. Shortly before the one year
period is up, I suggest you improve your product and then file a
new $110 Provisional Patent Application on the improved
invention.
Doing this could give you a new, one year lease on putting “Patent
Pending” on your product and marketing materials. If you make at
least one improvement to your product annually, you could file a
new $110 provisional patent application on the improved invention
every year to follow, and you will have the benefits of the “Patent
Pending” phrase for a year per each product improvement.
Information on filing a Provisional Patent Application can be
found on the USPTO’s website at
www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/types/provapp.jsp
The second to the last bullet point under “Features” states that
filing multiple Provisional Patent Applications is “allowed.” You
may wish to consult with a Patent Attorney for a legal opinion on
what the USPTO means.
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Arrange exclusives with your suppliers
A great way to protect your product before it even gets to market is
to reach exclusive agreements with your suppliers. This is where
they would agree not to sell your product components to any other
companies like yours, in your market. These agreements are
usually based on certain purchase minimums. If you can’t find a
supplier to sell to you exclusively, you should be able to at least
find a supplier who can furnish you with unmatched and superior
quality components, with great customer service.
Keep the trade secrets, components & suppliers of your
product confidential
A great way to protect your product without a patent is to guard the
trade secrets and components of your product. If your competitors
are unable to buy all the components, or are unable to buy high
quality components, they won’t be able to copy you as easily.
Make sure you mislead and misdirect anyone that calls you
wanting to know who your suppliers are or what part numbers you
are buying. Never give information like this to anyone besides
your trusted inner circle. For example, some brazen copycats have
called Storm Stoppers and asked for the part numbers for the 3M
Dual Lock we use. Instead, we gave them the part number for
hook and loop fasteners, a product we don’t even use.
Back in 2005 and 2006, many copycats thought Storm Stoppers
was an easy product to reverse-engineer. They thought it was just
translucent corrugated plastic and 3M Dual Lock fasteners. But it
is not that simple. For example, what type and size of plastic do
we use? Who are our suppliers? There are dozens of corrugated
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plastic companies and some are known for having terrible quality
plastic. What is the precise recipe our factory uses to make our
corrugated plastic resistant to over 10 years of continuous
sunlight? Similarly, there are many variations of 3M Dual Lock
available. Which specific combinations do we use?
We have many trade secrets in our company. A copycat may be
able to copy what they think the product is, but there is no way
they can copy the high quality of Storm Stoppers. Copycats that
have tried to duplicate our product had their product deteriorate
after a short time in the sun. Others used the wrong type of Dual
Lock, which caused their knockoff products to not stay attached.
Outwork your competitors
The most cost effective protection for your new business is to work
hard and give good service to your customers. This costs you
nothing. As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent
inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” The founder of
McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, said, “Luck is a dividend of hard work;
the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
You should strive to always outwork your competitors. If they
stop working at 4 pm, you should quit at 9 pm. If they open their
doors at 9 am, you should open for business at 7 am. If they don’t
exhibit in your industry’s trade shows, you should. If they close
for lunch, when you go to lunch, forward your business telephone
line to your cell phone so you can take any customer calls that
come in during lunch. In my opinion, customers will notice the
business that provides extra service and answers their phone on
weekends, at night, at lunch, etc. In addition to outworking your
competitors, you should also out-innovate them.
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Give excellent service to your customers
An easy way to stand out from your competitors is to give your
customers excellent customer service. If they are in California and
order one of your products, ship it with a reliable package service
like UPS or FedEx. That way, your customer is emailed the
package tracking number when his order ships. If it takes a week
for his package to arrive, track it for him and email him status
updates. Customers value good service and will remember you.
If you are professional and give superior customer service, no one
will care that you are a one man operation or that you are just
starting out. Get in the habit of saying “we” in your phone calls to
customers. Make sure you are always dressed in a uniform
consistent with your industry. In my hurricane protection business,
that means I wear shorts and embroidered polo shirts. Being
professional doesn’t cost you anything and separates you from any
potential competitors who do not have your superior customer
service attitude. In my experience, the personal touch of
answering emails quickly and being available at all hours to speak
to your customers will go a long way for you.
The two parts of being a successful inventor
There are two parts of being a successful inventor. These are
HARD and EASY. The hard part is having a product people want
to buy. The easy part is working 12-14 hour days and having a
great work ethic in marketing and selling it.
I learned this lesson when I had my collegiate wheel cover product.
At trade shows, prospective customers would see Clever Covers
and say it was “neat” but they wouldn’t buy. In contrast, at the
first home show I did for Storm Stoppers, customers would say
how “neat” Storm Stoppers were and they bought right away.
We had prospective customers six deep at our home show booths.
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If you are fortunate to have a product people want to buy, it will be
easy to work long hours selling it.
Use a professional signature in your emails
A great customer service technique is to have a professional email
signature on all your outgoing emails. Since you will most likely
be the only employee initially, you should proudly put “President
& Inventor” below your name in your email signature. Customers
love it when the President of the Company emails them personally.
Tell your customers you appreciate them
A good habit to get into is to thank your customers after the sale.
I’m not talking at the point of sale. Saying thank you then is an
obvious and natural habit. Several weeks after they buy your
product, send them an email or a thank you card. Small customer
service details like this matter.
None of your competitors will do this. Everybody loves being
thanked, and you making this extra effort will position you very
positively in the customer’s eyes. The positive affirmation you
will get back from your customers will also make you feel good
about your product and yourself. This conversation with your
customer will also give you an opportunity to mention any news
about your product. In your letter or email, you could mention any
product specials.
Pitch your product to the media
A great way to protect your product in the marketplace and
distinguish it from any copycat competitors is to pursue free
publicity. Publicity is great protection for a product as it helps
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reinforce the brand in the customer’s mind. It also leads to sales
and other opportunities. There’s an old saying that you pay for
advertising, but you pray for publicity. In my experience, media
coverage is very important to an inventor.
In September of 2004, I made a media contact at a friend’s
restaurant that changed my life. I had just come from a batting
cage, which was our first improvised “high impact testing lab,” and
was excited about my Storm Stoppers
product’s performance in repelling 90
mph fastball pitches. On a whim, I
stopped in at Journeys Restaurant, owned
by my longtime friends Bram &
Geraldine Fowler. That night, Journeys
was closed for a private party, but Bram
and Geraldine welcomed me inside.
I learned that Journeys was closed because
Bram and Geraldine were hosting a private
party for Mike Holfeld from Local 6 News,
which is the CBS Affiliate in Orlando.
Mike asked me why I was so excited. I told
him I had just tested Storm Stoppers and my
product worked. This was weeks after four
major hurricanes hit Florida in rapid
succession, and there was a lot of consumer
interest in hurricane protection stories. My timing in meeting
Mike Holfeld was excellent. He sensed a good story and asked me
for the exclusive. I quickly agreed.
His story aired November 10, 2004 and was the first of many on
Storm Stoppers. Mike’s story quickly positioned the Storm
Stoppers product in the minds of area homeowners and was
remembered many months after airing. It led to other stories about
Storm Stoppers on other news stations around the state. CNBC’s
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Mike Hegedus excerpted this Local 6 interview in August of 2008
for his “Mike on America” segment on Storm Stoppers.
Like a lot of great companies that were built through publicity in
their early days, I don’t know where we’d be today without Mike
Holfeld’s initial news story. Good publicity has immense power.
Publicity helps to make your company first in the mind
Below are some of the many logos from the dozens of local &
national media interviews that have been done on Storm Stoppers
since 2004. The first picture shows Good Morning America
Meteorologist Sam Champion pointing to a Storm Stopper panel at
the Wall of Wind at FIU in Miami. That interview aired on June 1,
2009. The other logos are a mix of Florida and Bahamas news
station logos. The more media you do for your product, the less
your customers will think of your competitors. There is great
protection in being frequently mentioned in the media.
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Create another, lower priced brand
You should anticipate that your successful invention is going to get
copied. Most copycats will try to undercut you with a lower price.
A great idea to protect your product would be to establish a 2nd
brand that is a less expensive version of your own product, and be
first with both of them to market.
According to Al Ries, author of the book “Positioning: The Battle
for Your Mind,” excerpted in the next chapter, large companies
frequently use a high price/low price sales model for products.
With pantyhose, there is the Hanes® brand, which is sold at highend department stores. The Hanes Company also owns L’eggs®, a
lower priced pantyhose brand that is sold in grocery stores. With
apparel, the Gap offers reasonably priced shirts, slacks and shorts.
The same company that owns the Gap also owns Banana Republic,
a brand which sells higher end apparel.
Travelling to India and feeling like a cola?
Try a Thums Up. Introduced in 1977, Thums
Up gained nationwide acceptance. The brand
is now owned by the Coca Cola Company,
which sells both Thums Up (lower priced
cola) and Coca Cola (premium cola) in India.
Both are made by Coke and both share Coke’s distinctive red color
scheme. Customers in India that drink a Thums Up may not know
their drink is made by The Coca Cola Company.
You may also choose to sell the same product but in two different
packages with two different brands. Plus, you would be
controlling both revenue streams. Automakers frequently do this
with what is known as “corporate twins.” The Mercury Sable was
the identical car as the Ford Taurus.
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#11 way to protect your product without a patent
Close a lot of sales and be too busy building your business to
worry about copycat competitors
A terrific way to protect your product without a patent is to close a
lot of sales and be focused on building your business and brand. In
2005 and 2006, we were far too busy building the Storm Stoppers
brand, making money and taking care of our wholesale and retail
customers to think about much else. We were marketing our
business tremendously. We did home shows, radio and TV
advertising, sponsored celebrity promotions and travelled
throughout the Southeast U.S. supporting our wholesale dealers.
In short, we focused on building the Storm Stoppers business.
Building your business is great protection. When you are focused
on building your brand and your business, you will be too busy to
think about copycat competitors. If you lose this focus and get
distracted by filing lawsuits against copycat competitors, your
business will suffer and you will become far less profitable.
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Chapter 17
Position your product as first in your customer’s mind.
A lot of companies have longevity and are profitable because they
hold the first position in the customer’s mind. These would be
companies like Kodak, Kleenex, Coca Cola, Dell and many others.
The concept of “Positioning” was pioneered by Al Ries, who is a
marketing professional and a prolific author. Mr. Ries is the cofounder and chairman of the Atlanta-based consulting firm Ries &
Ries, with his partner and daughter, Ms. Laura Ries.
Along with Jack Trout, Mr. Ries coined the term "Positioning," as
it relates to the field of marketing, and authored “Positioning: The
Battle for Your Mind,” an industry standard on the subject.
Ironically, “Positioning” was Mr. Ries first book on the subject.
Mr. Ries has also written almost a dozen other fascinating books
on various marketing and advertising concepts.
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I think Mr. Ries’ lessons on positioning your product and your
brand to be first in the mind of a customer is what inventors should
focus on. In his “Positioning” book shown on the previous page,
Mr. Ries writes, “The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to be
first. You can demonstrate the validity of this principle by asking
yourself a few simple questions:” (Excerpted with permission)
1. What is the name of the first person to fly solo across the North
Atlantic? Charles Lindbergh, right? Now, what’s the name of the
second person to fly solo across the North Atlantic? Not so easy to
answer, is it?
2. What’s the name of the first person to walk on the moon? Neil
Armstrong, of course. What’s the name of the second?
3. What’s the name of the highest mountain in the world? Mount
Everest in the Himalayas, right? What’s the name of the second?
As these examples demonstrate, the first person, the first mountain
and the first company to occupy the “first” position in the mind are
going to be awfully hard to dislodge.
What if your name is not Charles Lindbergh, Xerox, Kleenex or
Dell? The hard way to get into a person’s mind is second. You
make a first impression, not a second one. In advertising, the first
product to establish the position of “first in a customer’s mind” has
an enormous advantage and will be famous. FedEx, Hershey’s and
Scotch Tape are a few more examples. In advertising or marketing
your product, it is better to be first than to have a “better” product.
If you have a better product, that means that someone else’s
product was first and your “better” product is second. Remember,
second is not as memorable.
I have been learning from Mr. Ries’ principles for many years. I
suggest you go to www.amazon.com or your local bookseller and
buy as many of his books as you can afford. This would be a smart
investment and you would learn a lot.
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Chapter 18
Build a Great Website for under $2,500
Author’s Note: In writing this section, I asked our longtime
website designer and Editor, Lark Kruse of
www.larkartgraphics.com, for advice. Her company specializes
in helping small businesses create websites that get noticed and are
SEO ready so they can be promoted and submitted on the
internet’s search engines.
Lark helped get Storm Stoppers placed at the top of Google
searches with the #1 search term, Hurricane Window
Protection. She did this without any paid ads to Google
AdWords, but through using keywords and careful site design
using basic SEO principles.
I asked Lark for some cost effective recommendations to safely
select a useful domain name and build an effective website with a
budget of $2,500. Here is what she had to say:
Buy a domain name similar to your brand name
Building a website is an excellent, low cost way to market and sell
your product and it helps greatly if your website domain name has
your brand name in it. One of the first things you should do is buy
a web domain for that brand name.
Imagine your invention is a miniature plastic swim flipper for
children. The name brand you select and apply for a Federal
Trademark on might be Flippers for Kids. Your colorful logo is
of a cute child decked out in a scuba mask and your innovative
flippers. After applying for your Trademarks, you should then see
if the domain www.flippersforkids.com is available. If it isn’t,
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look for something similar, such as www.flippers4kids.com. You
will want to find a domain name similar to your brand name
because the #1 way you will establish your product in the
marketplace is to get it first in the minds of your prospective
customers. By having your web domain name similar to your
brand name, you are imprinting your brand in the prospect’s mind
every time he visits your website or sees any mention of it.
Safely searching for your domain name
Your best bet at searching for the domain name safely is to use a
WHOIS search tool on a non-registrar site such as
www.dnstools.com, or open a web browser and type in the domain
desired. If your selected web domain is owned by someone else,
you will see either an existing website or a “parked page” that has
ads for similar sites. If your targeted domain is not owned by
anyone, you’ll get a “Sorry, we couldn’t find that name” error
message. That tells you your desired domain name is available.
Most web domain Registrars charge no more than $20 per year for
a new web domain name registration. Shop around for a good deal,
but remember that domain name registration isn’t included in web
site hosting. It makes it easier if you register your domain with
your hosting company.
Beware of “Sandbaggers”
Many large Registrars like Godaddy.com have outside
“sandbaggers,” which place tracking cookies or use bots to see
patterns of specific web domain searches. These sandbaggers are
companies who speculate and try to corner the market on a specific
website name or names. If a domain name has been searched a lot
through a domain reseller or seems like a profitable candidate for
resale, these companies will buy the domain name, hoping to resell
it for more than it’s worth.
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Hosting your new website
When buying a domain through a Registrar, an option is to have
the domain be hosted there. Do your homework on pricing and
plans. Different registrars offer different registration lengths (i.e. 1
year, 2 year, 5 year, etc.) and different prices, as well as various
hosting packages. Check online to make sure your new hosting
company has a good history of reliability. You don’t want to be
left with massive down times or with a crashed site because the
website hosting company folded.
You’ll want to verify with your new hosting company that there is
plenty of or unlimited bandwidth, so your site can grow and handle
a high amount of website visitors and traffic without crashing.
Bandwidth determines the amount of space and content on your
site and the amount of website visitors and traffic it can handle.
Some hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth and storage
space for most small businesses.
Offering “Virtual Terminal” Merchant Services
If you are going to offer your product for sale on your website, you
will want to select a Merchant Processing Service so you can
accept credit cards for payment. This is done right on your website
via a “virtual terminal,” so you won’t have to buy a physical credit
card terminal. Popular merchant processing services are user
friendly, easy to navigate and integrate right into a website. In
exchange for this convenience and ease of setting up, they take a
percentage out of each sale. Check with your website designer to
see if they can recommend a good merchant services processor.
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Building your website with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Techniques
Once you have a domain name that reinforces your name brand,
the next step is to create your website to market and sell your
product. In my experience, I wouldn’t suggest trying to build the
site yourself. Website design is a skilled art (regardless of the
constant commercials for website software saying they are easy to
build with their programs). Beyond the overall design of your
website, you want to make sure it is coded properly. This is done
by an experienced website designer who is skilled in Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques so that Google, Yahoo,
Bing and the other search engine “bots” catalog your site properly.
If your website is coded correctly, the search engine bots will do
their job and your website will rise in relevance during customer
searches on the Internet.
Finding a website designer
Most website designers can email you a list of links of past
websites they have designed. I suggest you find a website designer
who is easy to work with, available to speak with you on your
schedule, and whose work you have seen and like. To find a
website designer in your area, you can Google “website design” in
your city or visit my website, www.larkartgraphics.com. The
great thing about website design professions is that your website
designer doesn’t have to be close to you. Most of my work is
accomplished through phone conferences and emails.
The bottom line is that your website design should be done by a
professional website designer who understands how the search
engines work and has a good grasp on graphic design. All of the
sites built by my company are coded as part of the building
process, so you don’t have to hire an outside company to do this.
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There are a ton of sites out there that may look good to the casual
eye, but are either not very functional (navigation wise) or are not
built properly to be found by the search engines like Google,
Yahoo or Bing. You should make sure that your website is built
using the latest SEO tactics to make it easily indexed, search
friendly on the most common search engines, and user friendly as
well.
-- Lark Kruse, Owner: www.larkartgraphics.com
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Chapter 19
12 Ways to market your product for under $1,000
Marketing Idea #1: Use a “Gang Run” Offset Printer
Most typical offset printers print only one job at a time. Because
of all the paper waste, this dramatically increases the printing cost.
In contrast, a “gang run” offset printer will print dozens of jobs on
the same sheet and then cut each down to size. This reduces your
overall cost. Use a gang run offset printer and you will save lots of
money on your printing needs for postcards, flyers, business cards,
etc.
History of Gang Run Printing
Printers use the term "gang run" or "gang" to describe the practice
of placing many print projects on the same sheet or piggybacking a
project on a vacant, unused portion of a print sheet. Sheet-fed
presses are generally "full sheet" (28" x 40"), "half sheet" (28" x
19"), or "quarter sheet" (13" x 19"). Due to the initial setup, in
offset printing, the first sheet costs more than the next 1,000.
Gang-run printing allows multiple jobs to share the setup cost
gives customers a large decrease in price for full-color printing.
In 2010, I switched from using an offset printing company to using
a gang-run printer. This has significantly lowered my printing
costs and allows me to do much more postcard and other printedmail marketing, at a fraction of the costs I used to pay. For
instance, a four color 2-sided 4x6” postcard that I used to pay 25
cents for now costs me $150 for 5,000 (3 cents each). If my
artwork is going to change frequently, I’ll get a lower quantity like
$1,000, paying under $100 (10 cents each). With a postcard stamp
costing just 33 cents, if I buy 5,000 postcards, I can mail 1,000 of
them to potential prospects for only $360. This is $30 for the
1,000 postcards and $330 in postcard postage. I can easily close a
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$2,000 sale with just one postcard! To find a gang run printer in
your area, Google “Gang Run Printer” and your city name.
Marketing Idea #2: Get a booth at a community event
This could be a festival, church event, school event or holiday
event. Booths at community events are inexpensive and
sometimes even free. Go wherever there are a lot of people buying
items similar to yours. Wear comfortable shoes and leave chairs at
your office. Your goal is to speak to prospective customers and
you can’t do that while sitting down. Hard working inventors
should always be on their feet. If the event is outside, make sure
you bring your own 10x10’ pop up tent for shade. Otherwise,
you’ll get worn down in the hot sun. Portable gazebos sell for
under $100 and you can find them online or at your favorite
discount store.
Marketing Idea #3: Shoot a customer testimonial video and
upload it to YouTube
Get your own YouTube account and upload customer testimonial
videos to your YouTube page. It is free and you never know what
will go viral. Google “David after Dentist” and you will learn
about a Florida man and his son who became world famous as a
result of their YouTube video. Now, the father of David enjoys a
nice living as a result of his “David after Dentist” merchandise
sales & personal appearance fees. In 2010, the pair was featured in
a Super Bowl Commercial.
Marketing Idea #4: Network at your local Small Business
Development Center (SBDC)
Find your local SBDC office by visiting the website listed in
Chapter 15. Then, make an appointment to get a tour of the office
and meet all the Administrators. Your local SBDC and SCORE
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(Service Corps of Retired Executives) offices offer free services
for entrepreneurs. They may have a business seminar you would
be interested in going to, or a networking event where you could
meet potential contacts.
Marketing Idea #5: Do a color postcard mailing
If you used Marketing Idea #1 to find a gang-run offset printer, use
the Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop programs I discuss in Chapter
20 and design your own 4 x 6” full color postcard. This is a great
way to cost effectively reach potential customers.
You could mail 1,000 postcards to potential customers. Or, give
1,000 postcards out at your next community event. You could hire
a youth baseball team to post them door to door in an upscale
neighborhood (or wherever your target market lives). There are a
lot of good ideas to use the gang run printed postcards. The
greatest thing is the low cost to mail one to a potential customer.
I’ve had great results with the Tune Up postcard pictured on the
previous page. In 2012, I mailed 10,000 to previous Storm
Stoppers customers in Florida. My total cost, including the
postcard & postage, was $3,700. As a result of this investment, I
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closed over $27,000 in new Tune up service calls to 70 prior
customers. Postcard marketing really works.
Marketing Idea #6: Put a Magnetic Sign or Advertising Wrap
on Your Vehicle
Advertising your new invention or business on your personal
vehicle is a great way to market your product at very little cost.
You can save money and design the ad layout yourself, using
Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop described in Chapter 20.
Most sign shops can digitally print your design on an 18 x 24”
magnet (standard size) for under $100. There are also wraps they
sell that can put a photo or advertisement over a window; these
wraps are perforated, allowing you to see out. Take your vehicle
to your local sign shop so they can measure the sides and back for
which size magnets to sell you. Some sign shops also sell a
magnetic business holder that you attach to your vehicle.
Marketing Idea #7: Promote your product using
social networking sites like Facebook & Foursquare
Create a new Facebook account around your product
and use their “business fan” feature. Or, add your product
prominently on your existing Facebook pages. Don’t forget to add
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a Facebook “Like” Icon to your website with the Facebook logo
shown above. There is no cost and you have the opportunity of
connecting with a lot of potential customers. You can also send
140 character “tweets” with product news using a
www.twitter.com account and announce where you will be each
week on www.foursquare.com.
Marketing Idea #8: Use Google Alerts and get automatic
emails on your topic choice
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google
results (web, news, etc), based on your choice of query or topic.
Visit www.google.com/alerts and enter keywords relevant to your
topic. For Storm Stoppers, that could be “2013 Hurricane Season”
or “Hurricane Protection.” Each time those keywords are
mentioned on the internet, Google sends me an email with a link to
the story that mentions the keyword. It is a great service and it is
free.
Marketing Idea #9: Use Inventor Blogs to market your product
A great way to market your product is to contact inventor’s blog
owners and send them emails about your product and links to your
website. Below are some inventor blogs/resources I recommend:
www.ideasuploaded.com: Ideas Uploaded is a blog
written by freelance designer and aspiring inventor Tara
Roskell from the United Kingdom. Ideas Uploaded has
valuable information about inventing, licensing and taking
ideas to market. Interviews with successful inventors from
around the world give a fascinating insight into the ways
inventors have overcome problems and been successful
with their products.
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www.abettermousetrap.co.uk: Owned by Graham Barker
of the United Kingdom, this excellent website has a lot of
useful information for inventors. In addition, Mr. Barker
has written his own book for inventors, “A Better
Mousetrap.”
Marketing Idea #10: Join a local Inventor’s Club and the
Intellectual Property Owners Association
Inventor’s Clubs typically meet once a month and share ideas,
have guest speakers and exist to encourage and support their
member inventors. The United Inventors Association at
www.uiausa.org has a free list of inventor’s clubs throughout the
U.S. and Canada.
The Patent Office also has a list of inventors clubs at:
www.uspto.gov/inventors/independent/eye/201002/organization
snetwork.html
If you now own a Federal Trademark, as recommended in Chapter
16, you should also consider joining the Intellectual Property
Owners Association. This is an excellent group for inventors to
network in. The website is www.ipo.org.
Marketing Idea #11: Join www.reporterconnection.com or
www.helpareporter.com (aka HARO)
These are free email services that notify you of journalists looking
for story sources and interview subjects. These services are not
well known outside the public relations industry. When you sign
up, you will get daily emails with a list of about 50 different stories
that various members of the media are working on. There will be a
brief description of the kind of story they are writing and what type
of story source or guest they want. If they like your pitch, you
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could be on your way to some free publicity and a new media
contact.
Marketing Idea #12: Be a guest on radio talk shows in the U.S.
Being a phone-in guest on radio talk shows is an excellent way to
market your product. During a phone-in guest appearance, you can
sit in the comfort of your own home or office while talking about
your product or service to potentially thousands of radio listeners
and potential future customers. These radio show appearances
could lead to sales of your product and other opportunities for you.
The best pair of radio station databases available
To get the opportunity to be a phone-in guest on a radio show, you
need to have the name and contact info for the hosts and producers
of the radio shows you want to pitch. Although you could build a
database of U.S. radio shows through web searches, I recommend
the easier method of purchasing existing radio station databases.
The three main vendors of U.S. radio show databases that you will
find in an online search are:
1. Joe Sabah of www.joesabah.com ($147)
2. Bill Gordon of www.radiopublicity.net ($349)
3. Alex Carroll of www.radiopublicity.com ($397--$997)
Alex Carroll’s “Advanced Package” cost of $397 is the least
expensive radio list he offers. His “Millionaire’s Package” costs a
whopping $997. Beside the high cost compared to the other two
available lists, I do not like the nonstop “huckster” quality of Mr.
Carroll’s site. I signed up for a free trial and got daily up-selling
emails promoting his other packages. These were impossible to
stop. I would suggest steering clear of Alex Carroll’s programs.
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In contrast, Joe Sabah & Bill Gordon’s lists offer excellent value. I
own them both and have used them to get on 30 radio shows back
in 2011.
Joe Sabah’s Radio Show Database
This has approximately 876 radio show
names, host and producer contacts and
emails, radio station addresses and phone
numbers for the U.S. and Canada. There
are many pluses for buying Joe’s list. Joe
has been in business for many years and
built his list himself. According to his
website, Joe used his radio station database to sell over $357,000
worth of books. Another plus is the low cost. Joe’s list costs only
$147 and that price includes his paperback book with helpful tips
for getting on the radio and the database of shows on CD-ROM.
Plus, Joe provides one free annual update. The only minus is that
Joe only updates his list once per year. So there will be some bad
addresses and email bounce backs, as radio shows change show
hosts and producers on a monthly basis. I think Joe Sabah’s list is
an excellent value and will help you get on many radio shows.
Bill Gordon’s Radio List
This has just under 1,000 radio show
names, host and producer contacts and
emails, radio station addresses and
phone numbers for the U.S. and Canada.
Like Joe Sabah, Bill Gordon built his list
himself, but unlike Joe, Bill still uses it
regularly to book guest slots to sell his
two books. Bill’s list sells for $349.
Although Bill’s list is over twice as
expensive as Joe Sabah’s, I think it offers more value. It has over
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100 more shows, Bill updates it monthly and there is much more
detail in his database.
For example, Gordon’s Radio List has “type of show”
classifications such as “News,” “Travel,” and “Book Reviews,” so
you can sort the list by the classifications and do custom email or
phone pitches to these respective groups. Gordon’s List also has a
special “Notes” section which has a paragraph or so about the
radio show, including the number of stations it is syndicated on,
the signal strength, etc. This section helps guests determine
whether a particular subject matter is a good fit for a specific show.
Gordon’s list also has the most current emails for each show host
and producer.
Bill Gordon was very generous and spent time on the phone with
me, at no charge. You get three monthly updates included with
your initial purchase of Gordon’s Radio List. Since radio shows
frequently change their show hosts and producers, these three free
updates are a good value.
Each Radio Station Database is unique
Joe Sabah & Bill Gordon’s lists have approximately 1,800 radio
talk shows in the U.S. and Canada between them. Surprisingly,
there is very little repetition between the lists. I strongly
recommend that you purchase both. That’s what I did. The $496
investment will be money well spent.
Two ways NOT to market your product to radio stations
To market your product to radio show hosts or producers, you can
either send out emails, mail postcards to the stations, or make pitch
phone calls. Joe Sabah recommends calling each station and
pitching each host or producer. I don’t know how effective that
would be. Most people hate phone solicitations. Also, unless you
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have their cell phone number, most radio station hosts or producers
are very busy and will not answer their office or studio line.
Another option would be to mail color 4 x 6” postcards to each
show. However, I think that radio shows get a lot of promotional
junk mail and your postcard would be most likely thrown away.
Mailing postcards would also be expensive, as sending postcards to
half the 1,800 list would cost you hundreds of dollars in printing
and postage for each mailing, plus a lot of time.
The most effective method to get booked as a guest
The most effective strategy I’ve found at getting chosen to be a
guest on radio talk shows has been to do an email pitch. An
email is non-obtrusive and the host/producer will either read it or
delete it. I use the “Email Merge” function of Microsoft Word,
along with a Microsoft Excel database of names and email
addresses. I then use Microsoft Outlook’s email server to send
each email. My pitch email has an attention grabbing subject and
the body of the email contains less than 200 words. I insert my
website link into the email and use my standard email signature at
the bottom with my phone number and my address in Orlando.
Using this method, I can send a personalized email to the hosts or
producers. I send them out 50 at a time so I don’t overload my
Internet Service Provider’s email server.
With radio shows, I have found it very helpful to be a “Persistent
S.O.B.” and send out emails for several consecutive weeks to my
radio station databases. I then take a break for several weeks. You
may have some hosts or producers reply to your email asking you
to remove them from your database, but on balance, persistence
pays off. Once you master the email merge function, you can use
this method to email your customer list or other email lists you
acquire. Best of all, it doesn’t cost you anything besides time.
Helpful tips for appearing on the radio from Joe & Bill
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Both authors provide tips for being a good call in guest on a radio
show. One of Joe Sabah’s tips is that you should stand during the
interview, as your voice will be much more commanding. Another
is that you find out the location of the radio show broadcast area
and name drop other city names in the listening area so listeners
feel you are familiar with the area and are speaking to them.
Bill Gordon’s tips:
1. Be available and respond immediately to a request. If you wait
a day or even a couple hours you are likely to lose the spot.
Answer the phone or email the minute you receive it and book
it right away. No “I will check my schedule and get back to
you.” This person is offering you gold, so grab it right away.
2. Send a confirmation email right away with your main number,
backup cell number and all the details. Be sure you understand
the show’s Time Zone. If you are booked for 7:15 am and you
are in a different Time Zone, ask if that is 7:15 their time or
your own. Once you’re confirmed, send a product sample or
book, sample questions and backgrounders right away.
3. Most stations will call you on a landline number you provide.
Don’t you dare be late. 30 seconds in radio is a lifetime. You’ll
miss the spot and risk getting blackballed by that station and
possibly others. They all talk to each other, especially if it’s
Clear Channel.
4. Don’t be choosy about which station you’ll be on. Many
smaller stations communicate with bigger ones. If they hear
you’re a great guest they’ll suggest you. If you were bad or
rude, they’ll communicate that too. Dan Buettner, author of
the New York Times bestseller “The Blue Zones” is always
incredibly gracious whether he’s on CNN or doing a talk show
in Vidalia, Georgia. That’s part of the reason Dan’s book is
doing so well. He booked with a smaller talk show host
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recently, who subsequently signed a 60-city syndicated deal.
You never know who these hosts know or where they’ll be in a
year or two, so do every interview.
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Chapter 20
11 ways to keep your operating costs low
If you are fortunate to be able to make money selling your
invention, you need to conserve your capital. Here are 11 ways to
save money and keep your costs low:
#1 Idea to keep your operating costs low
Start small and work out of your house or apartment
Some of the greatest companies in the world started out of their
garage or a spare bedroom. Harley Davidson, for example, started
out of a small wood shed. This shed is on display at the Orlando
Harley Davidson Dealership. Hewlett Packard is another example.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started out of their garage.
Starting small by working out of your home keeps your costs down
and also eliminates any sort of commute, thus saving gas. You can
also receive a “home office” tax deduction on the space that is
dedicated to your business. Consult an accountant for details on
the IRS’ home office tax deduction.
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Negotiate a good lease on a small office
If you rent an office, make sure it is convenient to your residence
so you don’t have a long commute. Also, don’t put any money
into fixing up a rental space without negotiating a rent credit or
reduction for your improvements. I learned this lesson the hard
way. In 2005, Storm Stoppers rented a 2,000 square foot
combination office and warehouse space near Downtown Orlando.
This space cost us $1,500 a month, but the true cost with internet,
telephone and electricity was closer to $2,250 per month.
The previous tenant left the place a mess and we needed to clean it
up to be able to move in. We received a $1,000 rent credit for our
clean up labor. We then spent about $20,000 over the next year
improving it. This was in the days when we were working 80
hours a week on the Storm Stoppers business and wanted our
offices to be presentable to customers and retail dealers. We
installed central air conditioning, put in new windows and doors,
upgraded the bathrooms and installed a kitchen and several other
improvements.
The mistake we made in over-improving a space we rented was
that we did not negotiate a full rent credit for the improvements
from the landlord. Since we didn’t negotiate a rent reduction of
$20,000 to reimburse us for all these repairs and upgrades, we gave
our former landlord a $20,000 tax free gift when we moved out.
Now he has a far nicer building that rents for much more than we
first paid, and the landlord didn’t have to invest any money in
these improvements.
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Rent space in a public warehouse
If you need a warehouse for added storage space and also a forklift
to move your products around the warehouse, use a public
warehouse. A public warehouse will rent you, on a monthly basis,
only the space you need. They have their own forklifts and pallets
that they will use on your behalf. This saves your company the
expense, manpower and insurance expense of buying your own.
Plus, a public warehouse is usually “dock high,” and can easily
accept inbound semi-truck shipments.
Use computer login services to work remotely from your hotel
room on business trips
If you run your office out of your home
and want to connect to your office
computer remotely during business
trips, use a remote log in service like
www.gotomypc.com or a free service
like www.logmein.com. Each allows
you to connect to your home or office
computer through the Internet. Both allow you to use your home
computer as if you were sitting in front of it. For an added
monthly fee, both will allow you to transfer files from your home
computer to your laptop via the Internet. Of course, emailing
yourself the file will save you this “sync” fee.
GoToMyPC costs $19.95 per month for one computer and $29.95
for two. LogMeIn has both free and pay services. I’ve used both
programs, but prefer LogMeIn because it is free and works great.
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Hire your kids as inexpensive labor
Instead of hiring your first employee, hire your kids. That’s what
Michele Kapustka of www.sendaball.com did. “My kids do a
good job and they make a good wage, but less than what an
employee would cost me,” says Michele.
Buy inexpensive graphic design programs and design your own
artwork for your gang run and screen printing needs
I use Adobe Illustrator 9.0 and Photoshop 6.0 design programs.
These are older versions but are easy to learn. Both can create
PDF and EPS files out of vectored artwork, and both are standard
formats in the offset and screen printing industries. Both
Illustrator 9.0 and Photoshop 6.0 can be bought inexpensively
through www.ebay.com or www.amazon.com for under $100
each.
I don’t recommend purchasing the new versions of each program.
Adobe Illustrator Creative Suite 5 (CS5) costs almost $700. It
does include updated versions of Photoshop and Acrobat, but CS5
is very complicated. I like the simplicity of Illustrator 9.0 and
Photoshop 6.0.
In the last 5 years, I have saved thousands of dollars in setup fees
at offset printers, screen printers and embroidery shops by
designing my own artwork. I have designed artwork for our
postcards, business cards, flyers, home show banners and vehicle
graphics. By designing them myself, I get instant creative control
and fast service. I design the artwork quickly, and then email it to
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the printer for a proof. To make PDF files, I use PDF Creator,
which is free from www.pdfforge.org.
Film a low cost instructional video on your product
You may find the need to film an instructional video or
commercial for your product. Although some people today use
their Smart Phone or a digital camera to film it, you still need
expensive editing software, and the overall editing process is
complicated for a first-timer. I suggest you look for a professional
cameraman (aka a “shooter”) who has his own High Definition
(HD) camera, as well as video editing software like Final Cut Pro.
He can shoot the footage you need and then you can sit with him
side-by-side in front of his laptop and “produce” your segment.
When editing, he can add in visual graphics, music, etc. to make
your video eye catching and interesting to watch.
Find a cameraman aka “shooter” at your local TV news station
One way to find a professional cameraman/shooter is by contacting
your local TV News Stations. Call the Assignment or News Desk
of your local TV station and ask them for the names of some of
their news shooters. Once you get the names, call back to the news
station’s switchboard and ask for these shooters by name. You’ll
usually be put through to their voicemail, since they will be out in
the field working. Although many of the local news cameramen
also freelance in their off hours, I have found that they may not
have their own video editing software. That should be one of the
first questions you ask them.
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Find a filmmaker at Full Sail University
Another way is to contact your local filmmaking university and
place a “Job Posting” with their alumni office. I have had good
success finding filmmakers who are recent graduates of Full Sail
University (www.fullsail.edu) in Winter Park, Florida. Full Sail’s
Career Development Center searches through their graduates and
then will email you a prospect list containing an average of six
resumes of candidates who meet your criteria. Then, you call each
prospect and interview them until you find one who has the skill
set you are looking for. Full Sail University has graduates all over
the U.S. so it is likely you will be able to find someone in your
local area. If not, they could probably direct you to a film school
in your area.
Get a free UPS or FedEx shipping account so you can ship
your product with tracking and insurance
Although many inventors may be tempted to ship their product
through the U.S. Mail, I suggest you use a package service like
www.ups.com or www.fedex.com. The U.S. Mail is great for
letters, but you can’t get specific tracking on the package unless
you ship with their premium “Express Mail” services. The U.S.
Mail’s “delivery confirmation” service only confirms when your
package arrives at the destination. It does not track your package
along the journey like UPS or FedEx tracking will. Plus, you have
to wait in line at the Post Office.
A better idea is to sign up for a free UPS or FedEx account. I have
had an account with UPS for many years and prefer it. To ship a
package, you log in to your account on www.ups.com. You can
ship a package slow or fast, depending on what shipping speed
your customer is paying for. Once you’ve printed out a shipping
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label, you can drop the package to any UPS or FedEx drop box.
Oversized packages could be delivered to any drop-off location.
Each company has thousands of drop-off locations across the U.S.
Both UPS and FedEx provide free blank adhesive shipping labels,
which you can easily run through your computer’s inkjet or laser
printer. The only thing you will need is shipping boxes and
packing material. UPS and FedEx tracking is also extremely
specific and you get automatic insurance of a minimum of $100
when you ship anything with UPS.
Backup your computer files daily
If you’ve ever had your hard drive crash and lost all your files, you
will agree that the most important thing to save money is to back
up your important computer files daily and weekly. This is one of
the most cost-effective, preventive measures you can take. You
should also use your computer’s “Auto Save” function to
automatically save your working files once every few minutes.
Computer files backup device choices:
1. Use an external hard drive. These plug into your computer
via a USB port and cost under $100 for sizable (i.e. 100 GB) of
memory. The latest ones are slightly larger than a cell phone.
Some back up your files automatically, and others you will have
to “drag and drop.” In addition to backing up the files in your
“My Documents” folder, external hard drives can also back up
your mail server email files, so you’ll always have all your
current and past emails.
2. Use a flash drive. Also known as “memory sticks,” flash
drives are small and can be easily added to a keychain or worn
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around the neck on a lanyard. Because they are small in
physical size, most flash drives also are small in memory, and
average 2 to 12 GB of data storage.
3. Use an offsite storage company. These are companies you
find online that backup your files once or several times a day
and host your backed-up information on their own servers. The
monthly charge varies depending on the storage needed.
File your own Articles of Incorporation or LLC for your new
company
You will most likely create a new company or enterprise to use to
market your new invention. Setting up your new company will
also separate you from any potential liabilities and lawsuits against
your company in the future. Once you have the name for the
company, you will need to file incorporation paperwork and other
documents with your Secretary of State, Division of Corporations.
In Florida, it costs about a $125 filing fee to do this.
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#11 way to keep your operating costs low
Bring your pets to work with you every day
Starting a new business can be very stressful. You have to work
long hours and there are a lot of details to manage. You cannot
afford to be sick. Doctors and health care can be very expensive.
To manage any potential stress and save money on future health
issues, I recommend bringing your pets to work every day. I have
two dogs, Katiepie and Edison. My Assistant Lark has 4 miniature
dachshunds. Although it can be noisy, interacting with them every
day is immensely calming. Studies have shown that having pets
around can have a measureable reduction on the stress in your life.
Another great benefit of taking your dog to work with you is that
you’ll never miss hearing the doorbell. With her deep and rich
bark, my Katiepie announces the UPS man’s delivery before he
gets out of his truck.
Aren’t they just the cutest?
Edison & Katiepie
Rosie, Rocco, Max & Charlie
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Chapter 21
Don’t quit your job
If you are like many potential inventors, right now you may have a
regular job. As you follow my suggestions on making and selling
your product yourself, the most important piece of advice I could
give you is to hold on to your current job. Don’t quit. If you have
a good job right now, keep it. If you have a so-so job right now,
keep it.
Your current employment is the greatest asset you have, as it takes
time to build up a track record of sales with your new product.
Remember, being an inventor is a tremendous risk, so if you have
stability in your life through a longtime job, keep it. There are
very few inventors who can follow in the footsteps of Michael Dell
and make $80,000 per month initially. It may take you years for
your new venture to become profitable.
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Chapter 22
Don’t spend your money on things you don’t need
One of the first things that will happen when your business starts
making money is the temptation to spend it on things you think
you need. My Storm Stoppers business went from $20,000 in sales
in 2004 to sales of almost $4 million over the next 2 years. My
personal income increased and temptations were everywhere. I
made a lot of dumb purchases that I later regretted. These included
a pool table ($1,900), gold jewelry ($4,000) and 3 large flat screen
LED TVs ($2,400). When I sold these items several years later, I
got less than half what I paid.
You’ll face the same temptations when you start having success
selling your product. As the photo collage above illustrates, I
strongly suggest you put off buying fancy jewelry, a hot tub, a
Bentley, a pool table or a nice boat. Buy glossy photos or
miniatures of these luxuries if you have to have them. Or, better
yet, if you feel the urge to drive a Bentley, rent one for a day so
you can get this urge out of your system.
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When times are good, put money away
When times are good, you need to save significant sums of money
so you can survive any financial downturns. Start a savings
account at your bank and put a sizable percentage of your income
in it. Buy $100 gift cards from your local grocery store and put
them in your junk drawer. Save for a rainy day. The greatest
lesson I have learned in the last few years is to save when times are
good because you never know when a downturn will happen.
Live modestly
You should also live modestly. Buy only what you need (i.e. food,
water, an occasional dinner out) and don’t buy things you can live
without. A good library book from authors I love (i.e. Michael
Connelly, John Connolly, David Morrell, Lee Child or Vince
Flynn) are much more satisfying than nice jewelry or a pool table.
Today, I live much more frugally than during the boom times. I
own my own small home, but it meets my needs. Due to the
downturn, my home is worth $150,000 but I
owe $255,000 on it. However, it meets my
personal and business needs. I drive a 2004
Ford F-150 with 129,000 miles on it, but it
is paid for and in great mechanical shape.
Don’t sign a long term office lease or a buy a bigger home
Rent month to month on an office if you can, so there is no penalty
if you need to move quickly. Otherwise, keep your office lease at
1 to 2 years in length. Also, don’t buy a bigger or more luxurious
home. When my business was thriving, my 1,200 square foot
house seemed too small. I thought about selling it and buying a
3,500 square foot home in an upscale neighborhood. In retrospect,
I’m glad I didn’t do that, as paying for a high mortgage in today’s
market would be impossible.
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Chapter 23
Position your invention & your company to the Media
Media attention can be very important for an inventor’s success
Many great products are launched with news stories and media
interviews. These cost the inventor nothing and have the potential
to bring the invention to a large audience of potential customers.
When Apple introduces a new cell phone device or iPad® product,
they release it to the National Media first at the various trade
shows like the annual Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las
Vegas. Companies like Microsoft and Apple hold press
conferences and do TV and print interviews, because media
exposure works for building sales and it is free.
I watch the ABC Show Shark
Tank and have always been
impressed with the companies that
were chosen to pitch their products
on the show. I recall thinking that
if I had an opportunity to go on
Shark Tank, my goal wouldn’t have
been to only pitch my product to show hosts. My goal would have
also been the exposure that would happen as a result of being on a
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nationally televised show. (Note to Readers: In 2012, I was told by
a Shark Tank Producer that “the network passed on your business
for the show.” Since the show is so “pro-patents,” this may have
been due to this book, unfortunately.)
Here are some interesting inventors & entrepreneurs that I have
seen featured on Shark Tank in the last few years:
1. Michele Kapustka and her sister are the Chicago entrepreneurs
who started
www.sendaball.com.
SENDaBALL ships
colorful balls directly
through the U.S. Mail.
These balls have snappy
and fun messages printed
on them, and there are
over a dozen designs to
choose from.
2. Invented by Leslie
Haywood, Grill Charms are
dime-sized stainless steel
charms that are placed in
food before grilling. The
serrated stem holds the
charm securely while
flipping, moving and grilling
food. The product has different charms that distinguish spices
and flavors, steak temperatures. When dinner comes to the
table, simply look for the meat with your specific grill charm.
For info, visit www.grillcharms.com.
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Although not featured on Shark Tank, I
thought the Sno-Knife invention looks
pretty cool. Invented by 2 Wisconsin
men, the www.sno-knife.com is a flat,
elongated shovel with a handle that
extends up to 20 feet. It is used to
remove snow from the roof of a house
or cabin and cut down on ice dams.
Unlike a standard shovel, the Sno
Knife’s flat design easily slices into the
bottom of accumulated rooftop snow
and quickly pulls it off the roof.
How to get free publicity
Media attention is often overlooked by inventors but it can be easy
to get. Some inventors may need to hire a PR person as not
everyone is suited to be pitch the media directly.
If you intend to go after getting free PR yourself, there is an
excellent book on the subject. It is “6 Steps to Free Publicity” by
Marcia Yudkin.
In this book, Ms Yudkin describes how to write a great press
release and gives you tips to avoid alienating journalists. She also
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provides the websites of many companies that will distribute your
news release. I’ve owned this book since the First Edition was
released in 1994. The book is now on the 3rd Edition. It is
available at most bookstores, on Amazon.com and on the author’s
website, www.yudkin.com. The cost is about $15.
Publicity is great for creating awareness
There are many other examples of companies that use the
uniqueness of their products to get exposure and build sales for
their products. In Las Vegas, there is a restaurant that has gotten
worldwide publicity by promoting the unique and unhealthy
“Quadruple Bypass Burgers,” “Flat Liner Fries,” Jolt sugared
sodas and unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes it sells. Known as
The Heart Attack Grill, this restaurant is so popular, it has lines
out the door. Eat their biggest, most fat-and-calorie-laden
Quadruple Bypass Burger and the cute nurses that serve you will
roll you in a wheelchair out to your vehicle. Besides the fattening
food, it doesn’t hurt that the female servers are all attractive and
wear revealing nurse-themed uniforms. Visit
www.heartattackgrill.com for more info on their menu.
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The Naked Cowboy gets a LOT of free publicity!
In New York’s Times
Square, there is a physically
fit man who has generated
massive amounts of free
publicity by playing his
guitar in his underwear.
Known as The Naked
Cowboy, this man (Robert
Burck) wears a cowboy hat,
white briefs and boots while
strumming his guitar and
posing for photos with his
adoring, predominantly
female fans. He does this in
the winter too! Mr. Burck
owns a Federal Trademark
on his distinctive look.
He recently sued and won a lawsuit against M & M/MARS which
copied his look in a commercial for cartoon M & Ms. Mr. Burck is
a true PR genius and got press coverage in 2010 by announcing he
is running for President of the United States. Visit
www.nakedcowboy.com to learn about his position on global
politics and other items. His platform was the very novel and
tongue in cheek “Vote Naked.”
I recall reading one of the articles on his website. In 1999, The
Naked Cowboy crashed a huge parade in Washington, DC by just
showing up at the front and leading the parade. After the police
escorted him away, he waited a little bit and then re-inserted
himself into the parade. Pretty soon, he had the crowd’s support
because of his chutzpah.
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Chapter 24
Stand out in your mailings to the media
In my experience, you have to stand out and be unique to catch the
attention of the media. Since your first contact with the media will
probably be through mailing them a sample of your product and a
press release, here are four unique ways to have your product stand
out from all the other things they get in the mail. You can also use
these ideas to have your product stand out with your customers.
#1: Put postage on your product and mail it loose
A great way of standing out with the media is to mail your
product loose, without any packaging. I print my news release
on an adhesive full sheet label and apply it to one of our red, die
cut Stylized S product samples. That way, it looks like we are
mailing a hurricane symbol and it stands out right away.
#2: Send your product in a heavy gauge, clear bag
If your product is too bulky to ship loose, another great way of
standing out with the media is to ship your product in a heavy
gauge, clear plastic bag. Reader’s Digest is the only company I
know of who uses this mailing method. To make it through the
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U.S. Mail, FedEx and UPS, you’ll want a heavy gauge clear
bag, at least 4 mil thick.
Companies like Associated Bag (www.associatedbag.com) and
Uline (www.uline.com) have free catalogs featuring thousands
of different sizes and shapes of clear, poly bags. Both of them
will ship you free samples of various sized bags for you to try.
A clear package is seen by everybody in the newsroom
Mailing your product in a clear, heavy duty bag will guarantee
that it is seen by more than just your media contact. For
example, the mailman and every mail sorter between your
location and the destination would see it and handle it. This
increases your product’s visibility. At the destination (TV
station or newspaper), the receptionist usually gets the mail.
Now you have at least 3 additional “product impressions.”
These people might buy your product, or at least go to your
website out of curiosity.
The receptionist would give it to the addressee’s administrative
assistant, who might be so impressed with its clear packaging
that she would pass it around the newsroom. By the time the
addressee finally receives and opens it, your product may have
been passed around to countless media personalities in the
newsroom, besides your contact. This could lead to future sales
in the long term and maybe everyone would be rooting for the
media addressee to do the story you are suggesting in your pitch
letter.
A side benefit to this strategy is if your media contact passes on
doing a story, one of the colleagues that checked out the product
might be interested. This typically happens at a TV station that
does a lot of stories each week. One producer may pass on a
story that another producer enthusiastically embraces.
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Since you have to ship your product in a package anyway, these
potential opportunities didn’t cost you anything. This would
also be a good idea to use when you ship your product to paying
customers. This is how we ship the DON’T File a Patent
book. We do this because the clear packaging is less expensive
than a manila envelope and provides greater visibility.
Clear mailings to the rich and famous
I used this mailing strategy in 1999 when I sent a letter in a
clear cover to Billionaire Warren Buffett complimenting him on
his appearance on Nightline and asking for advice for my
Clever Covers business. To my surprise and delight, he sent me
a handwritten and signed letter on his Berkshire Hathaway linen
letterhead.
In 2002, I sent a clear gift bag containing my Arkansas
collegiate wheel covers and Fan Waves to former President Bill
Clinton. Mr. Clinton sent me back a signed letter on his
personal stationery. You can see Mr. Buffett & Mr. Clinton’s
letters to me in Appendix F.
Other ways to use clear mailings
You could also this idea to send product samples in clear
packages to various celebrities or high profile business
personalities. Perhaps your clear packaging will get their
attention and they’ll use your product or give you a testimonial.
201
#3: Send your product in distinctive wrapping paper
Another great way to stand out with the media is to package your
product in distinctive wrapping paper. I have mailed taped
together currency and it really stands out. I doubt they will be
throwing away my memorable wrapping paper. If you use $1 bills,
they probably won’t think it’s a bribe. Throw in a $5 bill for
variety. You can see this on the lower right of the picture below.
You can buy sheets of $1 bills from the U.S. Treasury but it is
cheaper and quicker to tape together your own. If you use 3M’s
Scotch branded clear tape, you’ll be able to peel all the tape off
without ruining the currency. The size of your product determines
the number and cost of the dollar bills you need to tape together.
I came up with this idea when I pitched Donny Deutsch’s Big Idea
show a few years ago. To ship an 18 x 18” product sample (shown
above), it cost me $33 in currency plus the UPS shipping fee.
As you can see by the photo, I combined this idea with the
previous one. I wrapped the Storm Stoppers sample in this money
wrap and then put it in a heavy gauge clear 4 mil poly bag.
Although Storm Stoppers was never featured on The Big Idea, my
mailing definitely stood out when it was delivered.
202
#4: Send a Ball to the Media
The company I previously mentioned, SENDaBALL
(www.sendaball.com) has gained sales and media mentions by
sending colorful balls with snappy messages through the mail.
If your product is too large or valuable to ship to the media,
send them a ball instead. You could buy some that say HAVE
A BALL, and then write a personal message to the media outlet
you are pitching right on the ball with a marker, such as:
“We are having a ball at the XYZ Widget Company. We just
celebrated our (insert news item here) and invite you to come see
our __________. Call me at XXX-YYYY.”
There are a lot of good ideas to make your product stand out in
your mailings to the media. Try to always put yourself in the shoes
of the media person you are pitching, and ask, “What would best
capture MY attention?”
203
204
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to
another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill
Chapter 25
Don’t try to keep up with the Kardashians
They say it can be “lonely at the top.” Well, it is even lonelier at
the bottom. As a new inventor, you are going to have a lot of low
moments. If you experience a downturn, you may find yourself
becoming envious of those you perceive as better off than you.
My suggestion is that you never compare yourself to any other
entrepreneur or famous person, as the grass on the other side isn’t
always greener. Comparing yourself to someone in a perceived
better position will always make you feel sad.
You need to stay positive! Although I have made millions of
dollars in revenue from my Storm Stoppers product, not every
product has such potential. Your invention may be very successful
but only bring in $50,000 in gross revenue per year. With the right
attitude, you can be happy with your revenue, as long as your
business is profitable and your customers are satisfied.
Don’t compare yourself to the true superstar entrepreneurs. In my
opinion, the true superstar entrepreneurs are those that made
millions or billions at a very young age. They seem to have had a
much easier or faster path from being a struggling entrepreneur to
success.
I was 37 years old when I made my first million with Storm
Stoppers, yet it took almost 20 years of making less than $20,000
per year to get to that level. I am not an entrepreneurial superstar,
just a Persistent S.O.B. who never gave up. True entrepreneurial
superstars, such as Larry Page & Sergey Brin of Google, Bill
205
Gates of Microsoft and Sara Blakely of Spanx are very rare.
Another example is Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, who at age
28 is a billionaire many times over. Try to remember this lesson
when you watch “The Social Network” or read “The Accidental
Billionaire” book about his life. There are 600 million people on
Facebook but only one Mark Zuckerberg. His success is very rare.
The Oprah Effect
The penultimate pinnacle of national publicity used to be an
appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. It has been said that if
you were fortunate and have your product catch her attention,
being on her show would make you a millionaire. CNBC did a
news special on the “Oprah Effect” recently. In this news story,
CNBC Correspondent Carl Quintanilla explored the Oprah Effect
and how she “turns no names into brand names.”
Since entrepreneurs featured on Oprah’s show can experience such
a fast track of success, several years ago, I used my creativity to try
to get Storm Stoppers featured in her annual holiday “Favorite
Things” list. My reasoning was that Oprah owns a home on Fisher
Island, off the coast of Miami, Florida. It is likely that she might
have had to put up hurricane shutters at one time or another. In
2005, I sent her a Storm Stoppers sample as a Favorite Things
submission. Unfortunately, Storm Stoppers wasn’t selected as one
of Oprah’s Favorite Things that year.
Storm Stoppers is a great product, but we are not a superstar
product, at least not in Oprah’s eyes. That designation belongs to
Spanx®, which was invented by Georgia entrepreneur Sara
Blakely. Sara invented a body shaper and pioneered “footless”
pantyhose for women.
206
In 2000, Sara submitted a gift
basket of her Spanx product to
Oprah. Oprah loved it and
selected Spanx as her Favorite
Thing for the year 2000. The
exposure on Oprah’s show
catapulted Spanx into new
distribution deals and led to
increased sales and distribution. Thus, the Oprah Effect worked
for Sara Blakely and Spanx. It is also very unusual that Sara wrote
her patent application herself, submitted it without an attorney and
received a patent in a short period of time.
To get on Oprah’s Favorite Things list, Spanx and Sara Blakely
defied huge odds. Each year, thousands of entrepreneurs pitch
Oprah with a lot of great products, but very few make her list.
Sara Blakely is a special entrepreneur. In 2003, she appeared in
Richard Branson’s “The Rebel Billionaire: The Quest for the Best”
TV Show. This aired on Fox TV in the U.S. and also in Britain.
Thanks in part to her engaging personality, Sara won 2nd Place,
earning a prize of $750,000, which she used to form The Sara
Blakely Foundation in support of women’s education and
entrepreneurship around the world.
Reading about superstar entrepreneurs like Sara Blakely and others
reinforces why you should never compare yourself with others.
There is always going to be someone who is more successful than
you.
In my experience, you can’t get jealous or upset at what you don’t
have. We all have gifts. Life is about figuring out what you are
good at and what you truly enjoy doing. You should focus on and
be thankful for what you do have. Remember, a good attitude
costs you nothing.
207
208
Conclusion
Live a Good Life
A great example of the importance of living a good life is the
stories of the two famous music managers shown above. The
photo on the left shows me in the t-shirt with famous music
manager Johnny Wright of Wright Entertainment Group
(www.wegmusic.com). Johnny is the Orlando-based Manager of
popular groups like ‘N Sync, Justin Timberlake, The Jonas
Brothers, Janet Jackson and many others. He was also the Host of
Cambio & AT&T’s “On The Spot” TV Show.
Johnny has led an exemplary life and has the respect and
admiration of millions. I first met Johnny in 1993-94, when my
Happy Vac business cleaned his house. He was a positive
influence on my life back then and I’ve admired him ever since.
The photo on the right shows former Storm Stoppers wholesale
dealer Tiffani Nieusma with Lou Pearlman. Mr. Pearlman helped
finance the Backstreet Boys, O Town and many other boy bands.
He is currently in Federal Prison for 25 years to life for stealing
$300 million from investors in a Ponzi scheme. Mr. Pearlman’s
greed ruined a lot of lives, including his own.
The examples of these two music managers are a reminder of the
basic choice we all have to make to lead a good life. If you are
209
fortunate to make and sell your product yourself, stay out of
trouble so you don’t screw up the opportunity.
In closing, I encourage you to stay positive and focus on what you
have, not what you are missing. What will set you apart from the
inventor wannabes is that while they are dreaming, you are doing.
I hope my book helps you to be successful in making and selling
your product, while helping you avoid the mistakes I have made.
If I can ever help you, please contact me via email or the phone.
My office is in Orlando, Florida on Eastern Time.
John D. Smith, President & Inventor
Storm Stoppers® The Plywood Alternative®
407-423-5959—office or 407-719-6988--cell
[email protected] (remember the hyphen between the words)
www.plywoodalternative.com
Author’s Note: I am available for presentations to schools,
corporate events, Patent Attorney conferences, USPTO Trade
Shows, etc. If you would like to have me speak at your next event,
please call me at the numbers above. I can also assist you with
quantity book purchases for your bookstore, school or law firm.
210
APPENDIX SUMMARY
Appendix A: Helpful Lists:
1.
2.
3.
4.
10 Reasons NOT to file a Patent (Ch. 1)
11 ways to protect your product without a patent (Ch. 16)
12 Ways to market your product for under $1,000 (Ch. 19)
11 ways to keep your operating costs low (Chapter 20)
Appendix B: Attorney Wanted job posting form
Appendix C: Advertisement showing a Storm Stoppers
Trademark infringer
Appendix D: Cease & Desist Letter from our attorney to
a Storm Stoppers Trademark infringer
Appendix E: Settlement letter from the Infringer’s attorney
Appendix F: Signed letters from Billionaire Warren Buffet
& former President Bill Clinton
(Now, if they would just return my calls)
Appendix G: Top 50 companies awarded U.S. patents in 2012
Appendix H: Helpful links from the book
Appendix I & J: Columns 2 & 3 from Tomer’s #5,460,363 Patent
211
APPENDIX A
10 Reasons NOT to file a patent (Chapter 1)
1. The Patent Office has a posted “patent allowance” average of
40%, but the true allowance ratio with some classes of products
is as low as 5 to 16%.
2. The Office Action rejection process is a moneymaker for
Patent Attorneys, but a money loser for the Inventor.
3. Patent Examiners do not have “obvious skill in the art” to
determine the patentability of every type of invention
4. In your Office Action rejection, the Patent Examiner will cite
the illogical 35 U.S.C 103(a) “obviousness” rejection clause,
which makes no sense.
5. Filing a patent application wastes valuable capital that you
should be using to develop and market your product
6. The patent process takes approximately 3 to 6 years; your
product could be obsolete by the time the patent issues.
7. A patent does not protect your product against a copycat; it
just gives you the right to sue
8. The Patent Office is a complicated bureaucracy with many
problems that may never be fixed.
9. Patent maintenance fees are expensive and unreasonable.
10. The Patent Office may be showing favoritism towards big
companies that, year after year, are awarded hundreds or
thousands of patents.
212
APPENDIX A
11 ways to protect your invention without a patent (Ch. 16)
1. Start marketing your product right away so you can be first in
the customer’s mind.
2. Create a memorable brand name and design a colorful logo.
3. File for a Federal Trademark on your brand name.
4. Share your prototype with others to get valuable feedback and
improve your product.
5. File a Provisional Patent Application and be able to legally put
“patent pending” on your product for one year.
6. Arrange exclusives with your suppliers.
7. Keep the trade secrets, components & suppliers of your product
confidential.
8. Outwork your competitors.
9. Pitch your product to the media.
10. Create another, lower priced brand.
11. Close a lot of sales and be too busy building your business to
worry about copycat competitors.
213
APPENDIX A
12 Ways to market your product for under $1,000 (Chapter 19)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Use a “Gang Run” Offset Printer
Get a booth at a community event
Shoot a customer testimonial video and upload it to YouTube
Network at your local Small Business Development Center
(SBDC)
Do a color postcard mailing
Put a Magnetic Sign or Advertising Wrap on Your Vehicle
Promote your product using Social Networking websites
Use Google Alerts and get automatic emails on your topic
choice
Use Inventor Blogs to market your product
Join a local Inventor’s Club and the Intellectual Property
Owners Association
11. Join www.reporterconnection.com or www.helpareporter.com
12. Be a guest on radio talk shows
214
APPENDIX A
11 ways to keep your operating costs low (Chapter 20)
1.
2.
3.
4.
Start small, such as out of your house or apartment
Negotiate a good lease on a small office
Use a public warehouse
Use remote computer login services to work from your hotel
room on business trips.
5. Hire your kids as inexpensive labor
6. Buy inexpensive graphic design programs and design your
own artwork for your gang run and screen printing needs
7. Film a low cost instructional video on your product
8. Get a free UPS or FedEx shipping account so you can ship
your product with tracking and insurance
9. Backup your computer files daily
10. File your own Articles of Incorporation or LLC for your new
company
11. Bring your pets to work with you every day
215
APPENDIX B
ATTORNEY WANTED JOB POSTING TEMPLATE
Employer Name: (Your name)
Business Address: (your address)
City:
Email:
State:
Zip:
Office:
Cell:
Attorney Desired Practice Areas or Type: (list what kind of attorney
specialization you want---such as contract law, business disputes, general
practice, etc.)
Job Description: What specialty of attorney are you looking for?
Applicant Qualifications Criteria: You must be a member in good
standing in XXX County and YYY Court. You must be skilled in XXX
Law (i.e. Contract Law, Civil Law, etc).
Application Deadline Date: Would like to fill this opening by DATE
Pay & Hours Needed Summary:
Hours:
Pay Offered: $20—$65 (or whatever) per hour
Temporary or Permanent?
Requirements: List if you need a graduate, member of the local Bar,
member of a certain Court or any other info
Your Preferred Contact Method:
Employer requests applicants to contact, by email only or by phone, or
both, their resume and work experience.
216
APPENDIX C
Trademark Infringement Advertisement
Notice how this infringer used a reference to our Plywood
Alternative® Trademark in the top line. The fact that they put it
first demonstrates the value of our trademark. I have chosen to
obscure the Infringer’s company, but it was a large national home
improvement chain.
217
APPENDIX D
This is the Cease & Desist letter from my litigation attorney. This
was mailed in June of 2007. The final settlement was reached in
March of 2008. A Cease & Desist letter takes a long time.
218
APPENDIX E
This is the settlement letter from the infringer’s attorney, in response to
my litigation attorney’s Cease & Desist letter. The infringer’s attorney
doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing, but agrees to pay $4,000. This $4,000
went straight to my former litigation attorney for his legal fees.
219
220
221
APPENDIX F
Signed letters I received from Billionaire Warren Buffett and
former President Bill Clinton, as a result of my mailings to each of
them.
222
APPENDIX F
223
APPENDIX G
Top 50 companies awarded U.S. patents in 2012
(Source: IFI CLAIMS® Patent Services)
Ranking
Company
2012 Patents
1
International Business Machines Corp
6478
2
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd KR
5081
3
Canon K K JP
3174
4
Sony Corp JP
3032
5
Panasonic Corp JP
2769
6
Microsoft Corp
2613
7
Toshiba Corp JP
2447
8
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd TW
2013
9
General Electric Co
1652
10
LG Electronics Inc KR
1624
11
Fujitsu Ltd JP
1535
12
Seiko Epson Corp JP
1461
13
Hitachi Ltd JP
1436
14
Ricoh Co Ltd JP
1410
15
Hewlett-Packard Development Co L P
1394
16
GM Global Technology Operations LLC
1377
17
QUALCOMM Inc
1292
18
Intel Corp
1290
19
Toyota Jidosha K K JP
1285
20
Broadcom Corp
1157
21
Google Inc
1151
22
Apple Inc
1136
23
Honda Motor Co Ltd JP
1132
24
Sharp K K JP
1118
25
Xerox Corp
1050
224
26
Renesas Electronics Corp JP
1039
27
Fujifilm Corp JP
1033
28
Brother Kogyo K K JP
1012
29
Research In Motion Ltd CA
986
30
Siemens AG DE
977
31
Cisco Technology Inc
951
32
Micron Technology Inc
913
33
AT&T Intellectual Property I L P
886
34
861
35
Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co Ltd
JP
Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson SE
36
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N V NL
830
37
Texas Instruments Inc
829
38
NEC Corp JP
823
39
Honeywell International Inc
815
40
Hong Fu Jin Precision Industry Co.
782
41
Denso Corp JP
765
42
Bosch, Robert GmbH DE
748
43
SK Hynix Inc KR
747
44
Mitsubishi Denki K K JP
696
45
Fuji Xerox Co Ltd JP
686
46
Boeing Co The
673
47
664
49
Electronics and Telecommunications
Institute
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co
TW
Alcatel-Lucent FR
50
LG Display Co Ltd KR
626
48
Total Patents issued in 2012
Total Utility Patents granted by USPTO in 2012:
Top 50 Patent Holders as percentage of Issued Utility Patents:
225
843
650
636
70,578
253,155
28%
Appendix H
Helpful Links from the book:
U.S. Small Business Development Centers (SBDC): www.asbdc-us.org
Two great books on getting publicity: 1. “Positioning: The Battle for your
Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout; 2. “6 Steps to Free Publicity” by Marcia
Yudkin. Both are available on www.amazon.com or by visiting the authors’
respective websites: www.ries.com or www.yudkin.com.
Miscellaneous PR Tips: Check out PR Expert Rich Barger’s helpful website at
www.cornerbarpr.com
Websites featuring reporters looking for story sources:
www.helpareporter.com or www.reporterconnection.com
Interesting Inventors & Their Products:
1.
Storm Stoppers: low cost hurricane protection: www.plywoodalternative.com
2.
Leslie Haywood: Unique grilling accessory: www.grillcharms.com
3.
Michele Kapustka: her company mails colorful balls: www.sendaball.com
4.
2 guys from Wisconsin: Flat snow shovel for roofs: www.sno-knife.com
Basic Website Design for under $2,500: www.larkartgraphics.com
Creating PDF Files: PDF Creator, which is free from www.pdfforge.org
Domain Registrars: www.dnstools.com, www.godaddy.com,
www.domainspricedright.com or www.yahoo.com
Shipping Services: www.ups.com or www.fedex.com. The U.S. Postal
Service website also has a lot of valuable info: www.usps.com
Remote Computer Services: www.gotomypc.com or www.logmein.com
Shipping Bags & Supplies: www.associatedbag.com or www.uline.com
Gang Run Offset Printer: Digital Propaganda www.dpgroup.com
To hire a recent film school graduate: www.fullsail.edu
Logo design companies: www.thelogocompany.net,
www.logodesigncreation.com, www.logodesignguru.com &
www.logoloft.com
226
Appendix I
Column 2 from Tomer’s #5,460,363 Patent
As referenced on page 74. Carefully read Column 2, lines 52-68 below and, according to
Patent Examiner Miss E.P. you will read that Tomer’s product “can be attached by
interlocking fasteners that do not penetrate through the panel.”
227
Appendix J
Column 3 from Tomer’s #5,460,363 Patent
As referenced on page 74. Carefully read Column 3, lines 5-14 and line 25 below and,
according to Patent Examiner Miss E.P. you will read that Tomer’s product “can be
attached by interlocking fasteners that do not penetrate through the panel.”
228

DON`T File a Patent!

Transcription

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