Patent It Yourself - PDF Archive

ChaPter 4 | Will Your INVENTION SELL? | 85
Hanes l’Eggs® stockings where the package (shaped like
an egg) made the product!
32. Miscellaneous/Obviation of Specific Disadvantages of
Existing Devices. This is a catchall to cover anything I
may have missed in the previous categories. Often the
specific disadvantages that your invention overcomes
will be quite obvious; they should be included here,
nonetheless.
33. Long Life Cycle. If your invention has a potentially long
life cycle, that is, it can be made and sold for many years
before it becomes obsolete, this is an obvious strong
advantage that will justify capital expenditures for
tooling and conducting a big ad campaign.
34. Related Product Addability. If your invention will
usher in a new product line, as did the computer, where
many related products, such as disk drives, printers,
and software can be added, this will be an important
advantage with potentially enhanced profits.
35. Satisfies Existing Need. If your invention will satisfy
an existing, recognized need, such as preventing drug
abuse, avoiding auto collisions, combating terrorism or
crime, or preventing airplanes from catching fire upon
crashing, your marketing difficulties will be greatly
reduced.
36. Legality. Does your invention comply with, or will its
use fail to comply with, existing laws, regulations, and
product and manufacturing requirements? Or, are
administrative approvals required? If your invention
carries legal difficulties with it, its acceptance will be
problematic no matter how great its positive advantages
are. And if ecological or safety approvals are required
(for example, for drugs and automobiles), this will be
viewed as a distinct disadvantage by prospective buyers.
Also, if the legality of a product is questionable, its
manufacturer, distributor, or retailer will have difficulty
in obtaining product liability insurance.
37. Operability. Is it likely to work readily, or will
significant additional design or technical development
be required to make it practicable and workable?
Usually problems of operability will become
abundantly clear when you try to build a working
model, which you should try to do as soon as possible,
even if you’ve filed a PPA (Chapter 3, Section H). Many
great-looking inventions such as the turbine automobile
engine turned out to be “techno-fizzle” when built and
tested. (Don’t forget to fill out another copy of Form 3-2
after you build and test it.)
38. Development. Is the product already designed for the
market, or will such things as additional engineering,
material selection, and appearance work be required?
39. Profitability. Because of possible requirements for exotic
materials, difficult machining steps, great size, and so
on, is your invention likely to be difficult to sell at a
profit, or at an acceptable price level?
40. Obsolescence. Is the field in which your invention is
used likely to be around for a long time or die out soon?
If the latter, most manufacturers won’t be willing to
invest money in production facilities.
41. Incompatibility. Is your invention likely to be
compatible or incompatible with existing patterns of
use, customs, and so on?
42. Product Liability Risk. Is your invention in a “safe”
area, such as a ruler, or in a problem area, such as
safety devices, drugs, firearms, contact sports, and
automobiles? In the latter area, the risks of lawsuits
against the manufacturer, due to product malfunction
or injury from use, are likely to be greater than average.
For example, a client of mine invented an ingenious,
economical, and highly useful device for preventing a
revolver from being accidentally fired. But, alas, though
he tried everywhere, he couldn’t get any company to
take it on because they were afraid of product liability
lawsuits if the device ever failed.
43. Market Dependence. Is the sale of your invention
dependent on a market for other goods, or is it useful
in its own right? For example, an improved television
tuner depends on the sale of televisions for its success,
so that if the television market goes into a slump, the
sales of your tuner certainly will fall also.
44. Difficulty of Distribution. Is your invention easy to
distribute, or is it so large, fragile, or perishable that it
will be difficult or costly to distribute?
45. Service Requirements. Is your invention free from
service requirements or will it require frequent
servicing and adjustment? If the latter, this is a distinct
disadvantage. But consider the first commercial color
TVs that, by any reasonable standard, were a service
nightmare, but made millions for their manufacturers.
46. Production Facilities. Almost all inventions require
new production facilities, a distinct disadvantage. This
is because the manufacture of anything new requires
new tooling and production techniques. But some
inventions require only a modest change or no change,
a tremendous advantage.
47. Inertia Need Not/Must Be Overcome. An example of
a great invention that so far has failed because of user
inertia is the Dvorak typewriter keyboard, which,
although much faster and easier to use, was unable
to overcome the awkward but entrenched Qwerty
keyboard. The same goes for the easier-to-use, less