Your invention is good or bad (?) The important thing is to evaluate it... This slide introduce how to practice invention & procedure of evaluation

1. Evaluate your invention
Chen JingFung (Grace)
@csie.ntut.edu.tw
2012/03/08
Chapter 2 &4, “Patent It Yourself: Your Step-by-Step Guide” 15th, 2011, ISBN: 1413313825
industrial applicability
or industrial application
is a patentability
requirement
Industrial
Applicability

2. Outline
• Invention practice
• Evaluate your invention
– Building a prototype
– Commercial concept
– Examine it
– Secret vs. ask for advice (?)
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3. Invention practice (1-1)
• Problem:
– Excavators damage buried cable (or pipes)
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4. Invention practice (1-2)
• Problem:
– Excavators damage buried cable (or pipes)
– Solution
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New-use:
invention
point:
“colorful”

5. Invention practice (1-3)
• Problem:
– Police pistols are fired by unauthorized persons
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Right gay?

6. Invention practice (1-4)
• Problem:
– Police pistols are fired by unauthorized persons
– Solution
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Samarium Cobalt
Magnets (SmCo)

7. Gyroscopic Top (2-1)
• Problem:
– Mr. Brown found hardly set a gyroscope’s rotor in motion
• Principle
– a spinning wheel set in a movable frame. When the wheel spins, it
retains its spatial orientation, and it resists external forces applied to
it.
• Application
– used in navigation instruments (for ships, planes, and rockets)
7
Foucault, FR physicist,
1st person demo it likes
earth rotates 1851)
Fig ref: boomerangs.com
Axis-cycle
is stably ?
grace@csie.ntut
Fig ref: scienceblogs.com

8. Gyroscopic Top (2-2)
• Problem:
– Mr. Brown found hardly
set a gyroscope’s rotor in
motion
• Solution:
– Inventor: Paul L. Brown’s
(Wiz-z-erTM) 1st royalty =
5 x his annual salary
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Foucault, FR
physicist, 1851)
Photo ref: ta0.com
US3945146 (1976)
USD322100
(1991)

9. Xerography (3-1)
• Problem:
– Daily job need to review many patents
– Copying documents cost much time & operating
complicatedly
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carbon paper be
patented in 1806

10. Xerography (3-2)
• Problem:
– Copying
documents cost
time & operating
complicatedly
• Solution
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http://www.xerox.com/innovation/chester-carlson-xerography/enus.html
US2297691
carbon paper be
patented in 1806
– Mr. Carlson, a patent
attorney, invented a light-
reflection copier at his
spare time
• Kodak rejected his
propose
• Haloid Co.
accepted it &
changed its name
to Xerox Co.

11. Summary – invention skills (4-1)
grace@csie.ntut
Ivory® Ad: “It Floats!”
11
• Most inventions’ creation by
recognizing a problem & finding a
solution
– KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)
• One important principle to successful
inventing
– “Accident” -> “Good idea”
• Ex. A worker left the soap-making machine
on too long, causing air to be dispersed into
the soap mixture as Ivory®
– P&G ordered the extended mix time as a
standard setting

12. Summary – invention skills (4-2)
• Most inventions’ creation by recognizing a
problem & finding a solution
– Try to conceive of ramifications to enhance its
value
• If you have trouble => use nonlinear tech. let go of
assumptions…
– Beware of the novice inventors’ PGL
• Paranoia, Greed, Laziness
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Paranoia
Greed Laziness

13. Why evaluate your invention (1-1)
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• Reason
– Avoid needless expense & effort, don’t spend
significant time or money on your creation
– Should proceed:
• Put your creation to be sold profitably for a
significant period of time
Cost1:
$100,000 in
profits or
royalties
Over x 20 Cost1
To spend for
searching,
building a model
& patenting

14. Why evaluate your invention (1-2)
• Misconception: “patented failure”
– Get a patent will be assured of fame & fortune
– “It is to be remembered, that the pursuit of wealth by
means of new inventions is a very precarious and
uncertain one;
• a lottery where there are many thousand tickets for each
prize.”
—Eli Whitney
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15. Patent Application: PPA vs. RPA
• RPA: Regular Patent Application
• PPA: Provisional Patent Application
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The invention is 1st
sold for sale
File a valid
patent
application
1 yr to start
test marketing
Utility patent (RPA)
has 1 yr secret!!
“1 yr rule”: 35USC 102
Apply PPA
Almost a yr
to test
market
File a RPA
Examining it is
feasible (?)

16. Building a prototype
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Fig ref: xqa.com.ar
Task board
reduces GaN
HEMT (transistors)
production costs
(< 1/3) in mobile
base station
amplifiers for 3G
and beyond
(IEDM 2004)ref: fujitsu.com
• How to evaluate your invention?
– Building a prototype to test
operability
• Try to have them made of cardboard
by an economical prototyping
technique
• Simulation by computer-world
» Ensure a field trial success
• Consult with a single expert
simulation

17. Commercial concept
• How to make your invention to generate a
significant profit?
– Problem:
• How to promote, how well it’s designed, how well it’s
packaged, the mood of the market, what time it 1st show
(debut) …
– Most marketing experts say: five “P” factors
• Production
• Price
• Position (its place in the market)
• Promotion
• Perseverance
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18. Intangible factors for market
– Talented design
– Trademark (good slogan)
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Fig ref: eamonn.com
Slogan:
“Roaches check
in, but they
don’t check out”
Slogan:
“The daily diary of
American Dream”
Fig ref: sillyslogan.com
Fig ref: china.alibaba.com
$15 RMB
Fig ref: bogoff.com
$60,000 USD Swiss 18K gold Westminster
Chime carillon minute
repeater by Constant Piguet
circa 1900.
Fine 34 jewel frosted gilt
movement with four
hammers striking on four
gongs and silent centrifugal
governor.
vs.

19. Commercial feasibility evaluation
• Despite the marketing uncertainties to take
your time run some scientific & objective work
in 4 areas
• Positive (+) & negative (-) marketing factors
– attached to your invention
• Consultation
– with experts, potential users of the invention, marketing
people, and others
• Research
– into prior developments in the same area as your invention,
and
• The operability of an actual construction of the
invention
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+
-

20. “+” & “-” factors evaluation
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Ref: Patent It Yourself book P.499

21. “+” & “-” factors test (1-1)
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• Weight (-100 ~ 100)
– Assign advantage or
disadvantage weight on
commercial value
• Balance scale analogy
– Help you understand the “+” &
“-” factors
– Don’t be used with any true
quantitative accuracy
– Team work:
• discuss to a common criteria for
evaluation
• Avoid bias
Bias

22. “+” & “-” factors test (1-2)
• Consider each negative value carefully
– Even the negative value cause to change
design or produce new production equipment
– Keep to improvement it as early as possible
• Didn’t justify the cost of replacing existing
production equipment, or the cost associated with
manufacturing & promoting the device
• The positive factors
– Great value to you help to convince a patent
examiner
• Proof: your invention’s patentability
• Or when selling the invention to a potential
licensee
– Potential licensee: any organization or industry
wanting to commercially utilize an invention
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23. “+” & “-” factors summary
• Summary those “+” & “-” factor for
commercial evaluation purposes to a list
– Make you focus on drawbacks (1 ~ more)
– Provide a way of comparing 2 different inventions
for relative value
• Let you concentrate more effort on
– “Sell” your invention to PTO, a potential licensee,
or a judge (fight existing patents)
• Examiner -><- you : unobvious
– Best prove by new & unexpected (superior)
results of the type listed above
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24. Use the techniques of
Consultation & Research
• Avoid bias to take the wrong path -> extend
your investigation by doing some consultation
& research
– Make sure the field of your invention
– Do your patentability search,
• Using backgrounds to improve your ability
– Prepare your application,
– Market your invention &
– Deal with the PTO
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Protect
invention

25. Call help – lay friends
• Ask both nonprofessionals and experts in the
particular field for an opinion, and researching
the relevant literature
– Tool: the positive and negative factors evaluation list
– Nonprofessionals
• They will tell you a consumer item what they like to
purchase
– Lay friends
• Their opinion you trust and feel will be objective
• Build a Working Model (WM)
– Inquire as to what price they’d be willing to pay
– Show WM to them and ask if they’d buy it and for
what price
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26. Call help – Experts
• Experts to be consulted in the particular
field, they can supply you with relevant
feedback
– Salespeople and buyers in stores that sell
devices similar to yours
– Friends who are “in the business.”
– Engineers, managers, or technicians in
companies in the field of your invention
– Scholars, educators, or professors who do
research in the area of your invention
– Pay $$ to use the independent invention
evaluation
• Ex. WISC (about USD $500), I2 Innovation
Institute (about USD $200), MIC (about USD$160
~ USD$5,000) …
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27. Nondisclosure vs. Disclosure
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Ask for advice
Keep secret

28. The part of
Non-
disclosure
Agreement
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Richard Stim, Attorney,
Nondisclosure Agreement
for Inventors, March 2008,
6th Edition
• Keeping
Trade Secrets
Ref: Patent It Yourself book P.489-490

29. The template for Invention Disclosure
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Ref: Patent It Yourself book P.491

30. Summary
• Start to practicing invention & evaluating it
(invention)
– Review the procedure as
• Building a prototype,
• Commercial concept,
• check it again, and
• Secret vs. ask for advice
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31. Reference
• David Pressman, chapter 2 &4, “Patent It Yourself:
Your Step-by-Step Guide” to Filing at the U.S. Patent
Office, 2011, 15th edition, ISBN-10: 1413313825
• Foucault pendulum in action at Houston Museum
of Natural Science
– about 180 degrees in 24 hours
• Blog: http://fungsiong.blogspot.com/
– Introduce hybrid TV (hbbTV) including widget design,
Android technology (API), system, ecosystem,
framework, service, application…,
– Agile for progressing:
http://fungsiong.blogspot.com/search/label/Agile
• About how to teamwork
– Some programming info. as Apache wookie,
refactoring tech, CE-HTML, a solution about
removing a backdoor “Trojan” & surveillance paper
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