Inventors often face tangle of red tape

USA Today

After years of tinkering, you've invented a high-powered squirt gun, a spray-on toupee or a chicken roaster you plan to sell on late-night infomercials.

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Resource checklist Johnson Research & Development, inventor of the Super Soaker water gun. Nolo.com, publisher of legal forms, has information about patents. Ronco Inventions, developer of spray-on toupees and other gadgets. Small Business Administration. The federal agency has patent information at. The Toy Workshop, developer of a motorized ice cream cone. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It has a list of qualified patent attorneys.

But winning one isn't easy. There's market research to do, legal hurdles to jump and unscrupulous advisers to avoid.

"It's grueling, it's excruciating, it's tedious, it's time-consuming, it's painful," said professional inventor Rick Hartman of Issaquah, Wash.

Here's a guide to making the process easier.

• Step 1: Tinkering with reality

A patent gives an inventor the right to keep others from making, selling or importing a unique design for 20 years from the date of the patent application. The invention must be new and useful or be an improvement on an existing device, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which issues patents.

But winning a patent doesn't give an inventor a license to print money — even if the patent is for a new-fangled printing press.

It's just the first step toward getting your invention into consumers' hands. Once a patent is issued, you'll need to develop a business plan, persuade investors to pump money into your company and license or sell your idea to a manufacturer.

Lonnie Johnson, who's credited with inventing the Super Soaker water pistol and has patent No. 4,591,071 to prove it, learned this lesson more than 20 years ago when he got his first patent. He figured his phone would ring off the hook "from people wanting my invention. And, of course, that didn't happen."

To develop the Super Soaker, for example, he said he was told he'd have to pony up $200,000 to produce the first 1,000 — money he didn't have.

Eventually, Johnson licensed the design to a manufacturer that's now part of toy giant Hasbro.

Founder of Johnson Research & Development in Smyrna, Ga., he earns a percentage of sales, which have totaled about $500 million so far. He declined to reveal the exact percentage.

• Step 2: Don't reinvent the wheel

Here's why: A quick search for the word "wheel" in the Patent and Trademark Office database turns up 49,303 related patents just in the past five years. So it's best to see if someone has beaten you to the patent before you invest a lot of money.

Many inventors do patent searches by plunging into the Patent and Trademark Office's online database (www.uspto.gov).

But Richard Apley, head of the office's Independent Inventor programs, noted that patents often are written in mind-numbing legalese. You may miss a patent if you don't use the right search terms.

For example, search for "water gun" and you won't find Johnson's patent, which is instead for a "squirt gun" that's "configured as a structure facilitating partial filling with water leaving a void for compressed air."

Huh?

That's why it frequently makes sense to consider hiring a patent law attorney.

• Step 3: Lawyer or not?

Legendary inventor Ron Popeil of Ronco Inventions has hawked spray-on toupees and food dehydrators in his ubiquitous TV infomercials and on home shopping channel QVC.

His most successful so far: the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ. He recently sold 10,000 of the chicken roasters during a single QVC appearance.

Popeil, 66, recommends using patent attorneys, but only after inventors have first proved that there's consumer demand. File a provisional application with the Patent and Trademark Office for as little as $75. That gives a measure of protection for up to a year, he said. Then you'll have that year to do further research before needing to file a formal application.

Patent attorneys charge $100 to $500 an hour, according to David Lesht of Chicago law firm Cook Alex McFarron Manzo Cummings & Mehler, which specializes in intellectual property law. In the end, an inventor might pay $5,000 to $15,000 or more, he said.

A list of nearly 26,000 lawyers qualified to practice before the Patent and Trademark Office is on the agency's Web site.

Johnson, 51, hired a patent attorney for his first invention to make sure the job was done right and to learn the process so he could do it himself.

Writing a patent application also taught him how to refine his inventions so they would better withstand legal challenges.

But everyone isn't keen on lawyers.

Hartman, 39, has five patents, mostly for toys.

He thinks many inventors can do their own work and save money in the process.

• Step 4: Watch out for scams

Companies known as invention-promotion firms promise to take ideas and turn them into reality, charging thousands of dollars along the way.

They may claim they have relationships with manufacturers or expertise in market research. In reality, many are suspect operations, Apley said.

Ask the firm how many of its inventors made money. Check their references.

And ask about the number of ideas they reject.

Legitimate firms generally have high rejection rates, according to the patent office.