Patenly Crazy: Part 1 - The Search
As I mentioned in another post, one of my goals for this year was to get off my ass and submit the forms and such to register a patent for a business idea that I have. I can tell already this is going to be an interesting ride, and one that most everybody appreciates the magnitude of because when I bring it up in conversion, there is always a sense of awe and a ringing "good luck." It's infamously a difficult, bureaucratic process and I can tell already it's just getting started for my little idea. With all the paperwork in front of me, the "flash of genius" seems to have been the easy part in the grand scheme of things. The "flash" came late last year, but I can remember early forms of it showing up much earlier.
Not long after I had started The Gag and had returned to California from Wisconsin, there were a couple of fun instances of friends and family seeking me out for coaching on starting their own business. None that I know of continued for one reason or another, mostly because I reminded them that starting a business is work, in the end, and more than what they are probably used to at their paying gigs and for a lot less money at first.
One particular conversion took place on a golf coarse and later at the home of my then much closer friend, Don. My other then much closer friend, Geoff, went out to discuss a business idea that Don and I both had at the same time. Both ideas had the same root, but mine had one more little part that made it unique compared to some of the early competitors we found back then. We had one more meeting on the subject, planned to do some work on the business plan, but ultimately it all died for the same reason as before - it's work, and unpaid work at that.
Last year, the idea the group had revisited me while I was watching G4's coverage of ComicCon (yes, the idea involves comics, but I'm not getting into it any more than that). I immediately started looking around on the net to see if anyone had started this idea since I last looked into it and there were many more examples, but none of them had that one unique thing that my idea had, so I decided to start back down the path again.
I knew what I wanted to do would be much more complicated than my other businesses had been. There would be actual programming and design work needed this time, so I began taking some friends in the business out to lunch to pitch them the idea. Some were in without much argument, others reminded me that it would be a very big thing to do and could take years with the crew that I described. For some reason, this got me persuaded me to slow down; perhaps it was the idea that I could not do it on my own, or with my own money, not in its current form.
Then, one day, it struck me, why did I need the larger, more complex idea wrapped around what was really the unique part of the business? Who was to say that what I proposed for the idea could only be done with comics and not everything physical item? I discussed it with Rachel and during this discussion, the part of the idea that made it even more unique came out and with that I knew I had something that was bigger than just an idea... it may very well be a unique idea, a patently unique idea.
I pulled out two of the programmers that I had discussed the larger idea with before and told them what I was thinking and both saw it immediately. After reading the "user stories" for the different ways to use the product, Mike, the actual programming genius that will probably make this a reality, said that I should definitely patent this one... now. That was in October of 2009.
Between then and now, everything seemed to get in the way. The day job, the holidays, etc. etc., all seemed to pull me away from the simple process of just submitting a form to LegalZoom. But with the new year, I was committed and one morning before work last week, I put in the effort and then waited.
The first step, after filling out the form and paying your money, is a patent search to determine the uniqueness of your idea and allow you to back out before the real work begins. At first, it was quite soul crusing. If you can imagine, you walk into this process with what you think is a complete unique thing, only to discover that you are not the uniqe flower you thought you were. Mine came in the form of 12 pages of a PDF document that listed the short summaries of other similar ideas.
Believe it or not, I almost stopped right there. I asked myself, how different is my idea, really? Why shold I both if there were this many things that were "close" to what I was thinking. Luckily, I read into them further and discovered that only a small handful really were close, and even then, only one got right up against the big idea. After no help from my contact at the law firm that will be helping me, a lot of help from Google Patent Search, I discovered that none of them really had exactly the same idea and, in fact, didn't really solve the problem that was at the root of the invention. They were close, but they missed it by that much... the security part of the equation was missing.
This morning, I sent off the note to the law firm that I would be continuing the process. My next step is to create some crude drawings of the process (hopefully today) so that they can be expanded along with my description of the processes to make it look like a real patent application. If you've never read one, I suggest you take a look around Google Patent Search, it's kind of interesting from a historical perspective when you cosider, this was the first time someone was writing these ideas down.
Well, that's the story so far... I hope to keep journaling about this process so that if it becomes something real later on, I'll have some sort of record. Sorry I can't be more specific on the idea until the paperwork is in the process officially, but if you catch me on the right night and with the proper mix of alcohol and enthusiasm, I'll tell you what the excitement is all about.
J.
Not long after I had started The Gag and had returned to California from Wisconsin, there were a couple of fun instances of friends and family seeking me out for coaching on starting their own business. None that I know of continued for one reason or another, mostly because I reminded them that starting a business is work, in the end, and more than what they are probably used to at their paying gigs and for a lot less money at first.
One particular conversion took place on a golf coarse and later at the home of my then much closer friend, Don. My other then much closer friend, Geoff, went out to discuss a business idea that Don and I both had at the same time. Both ideas had the same root, but mine had one more little part that made it unique compared to some of the early competitors we found back then. We had one more meeting on the subject, planned to do some work on the business plan, but ultimately it all died for the same reason as before - it's work, and unpaid work at that.
Last year, the idea the group had revisited me while I was watching G4's coverage of ComicCon (yes, the idea involves comics, but I'm not getting into it any more than that). I immediately started looking around on the net to see if anyone had started this idea since I last looked into it and there were many more examples, but none of them had that one unique thing that my idea had, so I decided to start back down the path again.
I knew what I wanted to do would be much more complicated than my other businesses had been. There would be actual programming and design work needed this time, so I began taking some friends in the business out to lunch to pitch them the idea. Some were in without much argument, others reminded me that it would be a very big thing to do and could take years with the crew that I described. For some reason, this got me persuaded me to slow down; perhaps it was the idea that I could not do it on my own, or with my own money, not in its current form.
Then, one day, it struck me, why did I need the larger, more complex idea wrapped around what was really the unique part of the business? Who was to say that what I proposed for the idea could only be done with comics and not everything physical item? I discussed it with Rachel and during this discussion, the part of the idea that made it even more unique came out and with that I knew I had something that was bigger than just an idea... it may very well be a unique idea, a patently unique idea.
I pulled out two of the programmers that I had discussed the larger idea with before and told them what I was thinking and both saw it immediately. After reading the "user stories" for the different ways to use the product, Mike, the actual programming genius that will probably make this a reality, said that I should definitely patent this one... now. That was in October of 2009.
Between then and now, everything seemed to get in the way. The day job, the holidays, etc. etc., all seemed to pull me away from the simple process of just submitting a form to LegalZoom. But with the new year, I was committed and one morning before work last week, I put in the effort and then waited.
The first step, after filling out the form and paying your money, is a patent search to determine the uniqueness of your idea and allow you to back out before the real work begins. At first, it was quite soul crusing. If you can imagine, you walk into this process with what you think is a complete unique thing, only to discover that you are not the uniqe flower you thought you were. Mine came in the form of 12 pages of a PDF document that listed the short summaries of other similar ideas.
Believe it or not, I almost stopped right there. I asked myself, how different is my idea, really? Why shold I both if there were this many things that were "close" to what I was thinking. Luckily, I read into them further and discovered that only a small handful really were close, and even then, only one got right up against the big idea. After no help from my contact at the law firm that will be helping me, a lot of help from Google Patent Search, I discovered that none of them really had exactly the same idea and, in fact, didn't really solve the problem that was at the root of the invention. They were close, but they missed it by that much... the security part of the equation was missing.
This morning, I sent off the note to the law firm that I would be continuing the process. My next step is to create some crude drawings of the process (hopefully today) so that they can be expanded along with my description of the processes to make it look like a real patent application. If you've never read one, I suggest you take a look around Google Patent Search, it's kind of interesting from a historical perspective when you cosider, this was the first time someone was writing these ideas down.
Well, that's the story so far... I hope to keep journaling about this process so that if it becomes something real later on, I'll have some sort of record. Sorry I can't be more specific on the idea until the paperwork is in the process officially, but if you catch me on the right night and with the proper mix of alcohol and enthusiasm, I'll tell you what the excitement is all about.
J.