Introduction
Inventor’s Commandment 2
To invent successfully, be aware of problems you
encounter and seek solutions. Also, take the time
to study and investigate the practicality of new
phenomena that occur by accident or fl ash of insight.
Persevere with any development you believe has
commercial potential.
Before we get to patents, the primary subject of this book,
I provide this chapter to discuss inventions and inventing.
why do this? To begin, you may be a first-time inventor
and thus have no experience in the real world of protecting
and patenting inventions. I believe that you’ll be a better
inventor if you understand and become familiar with some
successful inventors and the invention process. Also, I
believe that too many first-timers get discouraged before
they try enough. To inspire you to hang in there, I include
here some past success stories. Hopefully, when you see that
many other small, independent inventors have found their
pot of gold, you’ll be stimulated to press on.
Inventing can not only be profitable, but it provides
things that enhance our lives, making them more interesting,
pleasurable, exciting, rewarding, and educational. as
the noted Swiss psychologist, piaget, once said, "we learn
most when we have to invent." Remember that everything
of significance, even the chair you’re probably seated in
now, started with an idea in someone’s brain. if you come
up with something, don’t dismiss it; it could turn out to be
something great!
Common Misconception: The day of the small inventor is
over; an independent inventor no longer has any chance to
make a killing with his or her invention.
Fact: As you’ll see by the examples given later in this
chapter, many small, independent inventors have done
extremely well with their inventions. Billions of dollars
in royalties and other compensation are paid each year to
independent inventors for their creations. In fact 73% of all
inventions that have started new industries have come from
individual inventors. So, don’t be a victim of the "no-use-going-
on-with-it-because-surely-someone-has- invented-it-
already" syndrome. While i recommend that you don’t
rush blindly ahead to patent your work without making a
sensible investigation of prior inventions and your creation’s
commercial potential (in the ways i discuss later), I urge you
not to quit without giving your invention a fair chance.
Another reason for this chapter is that many inventors
come up with valuable inventions, but they haven’t developed
them sufficiently so that they can be readily sold. if their
creations could be improved with further work, they’d
have a far greater chance of success. So here I’ll also give
some hints about such things as improving your inventions,
solving problems about workability, and drawbacks.
If you’ve already made an invention, or are even in
the business of inventing, I believe the techniques in this
chapter that increase your creativity and provide additional
stimulation will help you to make more and better inventions.
On the other hand, I also recognize that the information
in this chapter may not be particularly helpful to the
experienced inventor or the corporate inventor—after all,
you’re already firmly in the inventing business. If you would
rather skip this information for now, go to chapter 3, where
my discussion of record keeping should prove of value to
even the most seasoned of inventors.
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