Diary of an Inventor, Part 6

It has arrived... the dandy little ditty I was waiting for has come. Now come all the big decisions. While there are similar products already patented, the patent agents believe that I would not infringe on them should I decide to patent my invention, so that gives me a big decision to make. Do I go ahead, get the patent, potentially spending a few thousand dollars, only to find out that no one wants to make the item anyway? Do I do nothing and save myself the money, time and effort? Do I attempt to license it without a patent? It's all a big crap shoot.

Ideally I'd like to get myself into a situation where the patent becomes useless anyway. You see, if I could license my invention to a big company who could put this product out and get brand recognition and a market share, it wouldn't really matter what the patent says, because in reality, brand recognition is far more important than my intellectual property. It is what makes people think "Kleenex" instead of "facial tissue". Regardless of how many other people decide to make facial tissue, Kleenex is still the go-to brand. If I can hitch my star to a company who can get my product that kind of brand recognition, it won't really matter if someone else infringes on my patent, because the population will already know my product as "the original".

The idea of trying to license my product without a patent, while cheaper, seems tricky to me. It can be done and has been done on a number of occasions. That said, if I were a big business and wanted to license a product, I would like to know that the creator did their due dilligence and made sure I wouldn't be infringing on someone else's patent before I plaster my name all over it.

Doing nothing isn't really an option to me. As tempting as it is to just relax in the knowledge that I created a product not yet on the market, I know I would never get over the "What ifs". What if I HAD managed to get this product on the market? Would it have changed my life? Not to mention the idea that someday down the road, someone else might invent the same thing and I'll spend years kicking myself. John often says a German saying and I am not even going to try to write it on here, but essentially it means "If you're gonna do it, do it".

There is no room for halfway with me.