Patent experts
 

Anybody have experience with patents. I think I have a golden idea but I can't tell if it's been done.

It's been done...

If you are serious, be serious.

Personal friend, tell him the biggest Chiefs fan he knows [well, second biggest besides his partner in the firm] referred you for good rates and service.

http://splglaw.com/attorneys/evan-r-sotiriou/

http://splglaw.com/contact-us/

PM me with real world details, if you wish, and I'll call Monday so you won't take him unawares. But if my initial sentence was unclear, if you are serious, be serious. Patent protection is a lucrative source of remuneration for creativity, but it isn't a game for those with a mere spark of 'hey how about.'

This man's life is finding new and innovative improvements on the past and working to secure the value of that improvement for the mind that conjured it. It's not cheap, and it's not frivolous work. There's plenty of frivolous people trying to impinge on that sector, but they hide and obfuscate and troll.

I'm trusting this community. I've given a real name to a person to a real member here to help him realize an idea. If anyone is unserious here, please remember here, some of us are not.

Good luck with that.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/howtopat.htm

A U.S. patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor(s), issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States. To get a U.S. patent, an application must be filed in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

File a Utility Patent Application

Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof.

File a Design Patent Application

Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture.

File a Plant Patent Application

Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.

File a patent application electronically

Use EFS-Web, the USPTO's electronic filing system for patent applications, to submit Utility patent applications, Provisional applications, electronic information disclosure statements (eIDS), computer listings, biosequence listings, International Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications , Design applications with color drawings, 371 National Stage applications, Reissue applications, Reexaminations, and Pre-Grant publications to the USPTO via the Internet.

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For more general information about patents and the operations of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, see General Information Concerning Patents

Be prepared to spend a lot of money and a lot of time waiting around on forms and responses.

If this is a microwave-safe tattoo ink, I've already patented that.

IIRC, you only copyrighted your scripted material on the idea, by memorializing it in the timestamped repository of the innertubes.

But if you could provide me a uspto#, I could verify.

I wrote my patent on a sheet of paper and tied it to a helium balloon that I released. I think that's the right way, correct?

so is it a cool idea, like you bumped your head on the toilet and come up with the flux capacitor idea?

or is it a lame idea like a silicone testicle for those unfortunate with only one ball?

;)

Speaking as someone who has multiple patents to their name.

Ideas are a dime a dozen....execution matters.

In essence even if it hasn't been done before....does anyone want to buy it? Because if the answer is no you'll have spend at least a few thousand dollars on a piece of paper that has no real value.

If you know what you're doing you could write a patent disclosure and file it relatively cheaply(i.e. around $100) and it would buy you a year to develop the idea and find out if it's worth anything before the real patent has to be filed.

But if you're asking this question you don't really know what you are doing and you're going to need an attorney to write it for you. This is because if you write a disclosure wrong then it will just get thrown out and be useless to establish date.

But really spend the time to build it, find out if people even want it. THEN worry about trying to patent it.

There is no magic patent something and then tada rake in the billions of dollars.

Take existing product
Add clock
Patent
Profit

both are great ideas in which I would look to you my friend for execution

thing is I have the logistics down. In fact I have a meeting with a guy who can transfer his shop to deal with the conversion. TBH, there's 1 thing seperating me from sinking some money into this and that is wheter or not someone's gotten this idea patented.

Google it:hmmm:

When seeking to secure rights to intellectual property, particularly a patent, you would be well served to involve an attorney as soon as possible, if for no other reason than their fiduciary duty would keep them from taking whatever details you converse about and running off to patent something himself.

If you really want to minimize expenditures, you can follow the recommendations of the patent and trademark office

http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/search/

All patents are online and fully searchable.

It's gonna eat up a shit ton of your time, and still may not find things you need to be aware of, due to the sheer volume of the databases.