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Feb/March 2010 firm newsletter

Where There’s a Workshop, There’s a Way

By John Rodat Technical innovations aren’t just confined to operation systems and cell phones—in basements and garages, the inventor still toils Build a better mouse- trap and the world will beat a path to your door, they say. And since the implication is that the “they” beating the path will come bearing those giant sweepstakes-sized checks, there should be considerable appeal for a working slob to capitalize on any native gift for tinkering and to hang out a shingle as an independent inventor. In the recent movie Garden State, a character becomes a millionaire by inventing a silent type of Velcro for military use (which, seriously, really would be a score), and in Envy, the character played by Jack Black devises some kind of dog-poop vaporizer and makes his own pile (sorry). And way back in the days when America was a manufacturing force to be reckoned with, back before humiliating oneself on a reality TV program promised the quickest route out of obscurity and poverty, it was an even more standard and convenient fictional path from rags to riches. Today, however, it seems that if you want to make the really big money, it’d be far smarter to better program or market an existing mousetrap than to actually make anything at all. Steven Wozniak knew how to make a computer, after all, but Bill Gates knew how to sell ’em. Furthermore, in the minds of the hoards of cable-subscribers addled by late-night infomercials, the must-have, labor-saving device comes with a shrieking Australian pitchman—or Suzanne Somers. And, really, neither figure inspires much confidence. The prestige of the eccentric basement-workshop inventor, futzing obscurely with flywheels, cogs, camshafts and/or flux capacitors has passed out of vogue, it seems, and given way to the punk glamour of the eccentric, tattooed and fauxhawked video-game programmer. But even if you’re familiar with no code more sophisticated than the one on your car alarm (which is going off right now, by the way), or if you’re nervously awaiting the verdict of the MGM v. Grokster case before introducing your software that allows for the boosting, er, sharing of music directly from the brain of the artist during composition (pre-copyright! It’s brilliant!), you may still have worthy non-computer-based ideas aplenty. People are still inventing actual, nonvirtual objects, and improving old ones: Like these, found at the Web site of local patent and trademark law firm Schmeiser, Olsen and Watts: U.S. Patent No. 6,732,965, which was awarded to Clyde Bascue Jr. for his Fly Fishing Reel with a Device for Enabling or Disabling a Preset Amount of Drag. That sounds useful. Everybody wants to control the drag, right? Or No. 6,769,147, which went to Shawn Stubbs, for his Multi-Use Broad Bladed Knife. You’ve got your Swiss Army, your Leatherman, your Celtic two-handed broadsword—but what toolbox would be complete without No. 6,769,147? Or the Stake Impact and Removal System, which we can only assume is something for the hardcore goth kids; or the Customer-Engaging Food Merchandising Module, which must be, like, some kind of Triscuit-pimping cyborg—which would be so freaking cool; or the Covalent Attachment of Polymer to Cell to Prevent Virus Bonding to Recepter. . . . All right, you’re probably not up to that last one. But those others, that’s stuff you could do, probably. If you’re still not convinced, not sure that your idea is worth the effort, you can go to the Web site of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov), which has tons of info designed to be helpful to the hopeful inventor, including a list of what types of creations do—and do not—potentially qualify for patents. Officially, the patent is given to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States.” In other words, it is intended to prevent any Tom, Dick or Harry from snatching your idea, cutting into your market and robbing you of your well-deserved fortified manse in the hill country of the Pacific Northwest. You can get a patent for a process; machine; article of manufacture; composition of matter; or for an improvement of any of the above. On the other hand, at the moment, you cannot get one for laws of nature; physical phenomena; abstract ideas; or inventions that are “not useful”—like perpetual-motion machines. (Yeah, we don’t get that, either. Impossible, yes. Not useful? Must be a Cheney thing.) Nor can you get one for an invention that is “offensive to public morality.” (As of press time, we have been unable to get the list of patents denied on the basis of moral offense—though we are really, really, really trying.) Furthermore, your brainchild should be novel, nonobvious, “adequately described or enabled (for one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention),” and claimed by the inventor in clear and definite terms. Given all these (somewhat vague) conditions, it is not surprising that the site suggests—though law does not require—that you get yourself a lawyer to help you with the process. But don’t let that intimidate you. The site is chock-full of pointers and warnings to help the unpatented avoid pitfalls and scams, and get patented. There’s even a Beginner’s Kit in PDF, if this is your first foray into the field. And don’t let naysayers squash your ambitions. It’s true that for every “better mousetrap” optimist there’s some cynic cautioning you from wasting your time reinventing the wheel; but where would that advice have gotten the holder of U.S. Patent No. D488,281, which was awarded in April 2004 to Byung Duk Min—for Bubble Gum. You’d have thought it was older, huh? rg/12/'>lung cancer systoms