Patent agent recommendation?

[hybridprinter]

Can anybody recommend a good patent agent that has fair pricing and is good with mechanical products?
My understanding is that patent agents can do the same thing as patent attorneys but at substantially lower cost?
This is all new territory for me so dont know what to expect cost wise, time wise and frustration wise.

[jimc]

if he doesnt see your post you may want to send a msg to capt john. i think he is going through the process now and has done it in the past.

[Capt. John]

2 things, is your invention unique?
Most importantly: will it sell and make money?

Then, do a patent search to make sure your invention has not been registered already.

I answered the hybird's pm in more detail and forwarded the below link to at:

http://www.uspto.gov/patents-applicatio ... ch-patents

I used "thoughts to paper" and would recommend them for provisional patents
done at a reasonable price ($800). This was all their highest price service. Could have been done
cheaper, but when you're messing with this kind of stuff, meaning something, more than likely
you have no experience in, being cheap might cost you more in the long run.

When I go for my full patent, I will do more research
and likely end up with a bunch more most costly legal firm to triple make sure the full patent is accepted.
Provisional patent is for a year, full patent is for 20 years.

Haven't been here much lately, full blown production is taking all my focus.
This means problem solving to get everything running smoothly.

If anyone is interested? if you're bringing a new product to market, it takes the best part
of a year. This was too test designs, having tools made. Easiest part of the design process
was learning to to use my M2 and make objects in 3 forms of plastic. That took about a month
to make good quality strong prints able to withstand the abuse and wet environment.
For which I thank the members here for.

[hybridprinter]

your final products for sale injection molded? why not stay printing them and keep design flexibility?

[insta]

your final products for sale injection molded? why not stay printing them and keep design flexibility?

John is making spoons for fishing, out of polycarbonate. They are thin, curved objects (a pain to print) in a plastic that needs to be water-clear (very hard to print), and he's already settled on the shape that works best (which he found using the M2), so now he just needs a million of them

[jsc]

I asked my patent attorney friend about patent agents. She said they're basically patent attorneys who haven't been to law school. If you find one that's been doing it for a while, they might be worthwhile, but most are only patent agents at the start of their career.

[Capt. John]

Time and strength is for polycarb injection molding. Takes an hour to print one spoon
out of pricey PET+. ABS breaks from the strike of a large fish.
3D printing will never have the structural integrity of injection molded parts.

Test.jpg (100.28 KiB) Viewed 12737 times

The spoon is lifting approx 55 pounds, that's .077" thick
with no damage, or the tiny holes breaking. 3D printing could never
accomplish this due to layers, instead of one melted together piece.
Preload with the small diameter coastlock swivels is tremendous where
it meets the polycarb.

My first order for spoons was for 19,000 spoons.
There's only 8760 hours in one year. For me to print out 19k spoons would take
plus 2 years, 24 hours a day, non stop.

Inventing something is the least of the challenges faced. It's selling it and having
a new product in the black asap. Finding venues to market your invention is where
you take a big hit, cuz everyone wants to make money off your invention as it goes retail.

I'm lucky here, because I have my own outlet at michiganangler.com and do all the marketing myself.
Along with all the webwork involved with my fishing info website at michigansportsman.com that leads
into my webstore.

None of this is easy, like you've heard said before, "if it was easy, everyone would be doing it."

Bringing a project/product into profitability is by far, the largest challenge potential inventors face.
My spoon project should be well into the black by July-August of this year.

[chad]

Patents, What a mess.

I'm a contract design guy. People pay me to build prototypes of electrical, mechanical, optical things. As such I have been around patents quite a bit and the conclusion I've come to is that they are rarely worth it for the little guy. The patent system is broken and has been fully usurped like everything else by those with unlimited funds. The patent is only as good as your ability to fight it. It is not a magic document that automatically assures no one can or will compete with you, it just gives you a legal leg to stand on when you're suing the other company. The other problem is China could care less about patents unless you have international patents and really huge dollars to to sue.

The going average seems to be about $20k for decent patent, that would pay for all of your tooling for the injection molds and get you tens of thousands of your widget produced. But I see happening a lot are people with ideas they just hit the ground running, get them out there, get the brand built up and sell as many as you can as fast as you can knowing full well that someone eventually will copy you. Hopefully by this time you're already established in the market and have some brand recognition going and are selling lots and lots widgets. If China is selling them there's really not much you can do except hope that people like your brand of widget better. There's absolutely no way to compete with them on price, and unless you have megabucks to go fight in court in China they're just going to keep selling them.
My 2¢ worth, good luck with your widgets!

chad

[hybridprinter]

We are on the flip side.. Already manufacturing with cnc machining and injection molding.. But new designs are not doable at any reasonable cost via traditional methods.. Thats were 3dp is beneficial. The strength will get there with multi copolymers.

[Capt. John]

Patents can be circumvented with a 30% change to the original patented design.
Patents didn't protect Apple, when Samsung jumped all over them.
It will slow those who copy down and that's about the best you can hope for.