Non-profit or for profit? SBA or venture?

Scott:

You have made a good start.. For the benefit of others I offer the info about a Provisional.. PM me for questions. I help folks like you out...

Do you know about the Provisional Patent Application? It only costs $125 and was designed by Congress to give individual inventors a chance at bringing their inventive ideas to market easily. It is SUPER EASY to do..

To see the top 10 reasons to file a Provisional Patent Application please watch the second video in this blog.

http://www.filepatentapplications.com/blog/

If a provisional patent application looks like the right thing for you to do then take a look at another website that shows EXACTLY how to file one using a video format.

http://provisionalpatentvideo.com/

If you need to know how to get your product sold on TV or to Costco, or Home Depot, or Target and the like then you might also enjoy reading this information by the Ginsu Knife guy! It is pretty cool. He gives you all his contacts and personal email!

http://bit.ly/GinsuKnifeGuy

Of course you could ALSO just go to the US Patent Office and figure out how to file a patent yourself. Here is the link..

http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/index.jsp

The flow chart there is pretty nice to give you an idea how to do what you want to do!

Their patent search is hard to use and you need special programs to look at the patents… Instead, consider using Google Patent Search!

Here is how you can use Google Patent Search to search for an "Oscillating inertial microbalance"

http://www.google.com/patents?id=M5GRAAAAEBAJ&pg=P...

Just type the term you want to search for in the search box. Play with MANY variants of your inventive idea.

Also, for a more global patent search look here:

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/advancedSearch?loca...

Remember... Patents are MOSTLY "Improvements" on other inventions.. So, while you may see something SIMILAR to your inventive idea it does not mean that you cannot patent your IMPROVEMENT.. Example... A tire is an IMPROVEMENT on a wagon wheel. A radial biased ply tire is an IMPROVEMENT on a non radial biased tire. There are over 10,000 patents on tires... Nearly every single one is an improvement!

And… a special gift for you is a sample Non Disclosure (also called an NDA) that you would have folks sign when you show them your inventive idea. You can change it up and use others but if you have NOTHING now it is a very good start written by my lawyer who charged me a TON for it!

http://www.4lowprice.info/images/NDA_GeneralMutual...

For EXTRA credit take a look at getting a free website widget here. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING. Just use the FREE widget thing..

http://cbproads.com/refer.asp?id=50245 It will allow you to put adverts to eBooks on nearly ANY subject. If you had a store that sells horse blankets then you would include a widget that featured an eBook on how to stop horses from biting! You get 50% of whatever book folks buy. Pretty nice!

If you like my answer can you vote on it? I ask you this because there are lawyers who read my posts and HATE them because my telling you how to do this WITHOUT their help... HOWEVER... many of them realize what I have to teach actually HELPS them do their job a bit easier because YOU are more educated if you choose to hire an attorney! Therefore it is important to LIKE the answer if it is helpful to YOU.

Thanks,

Dave

My source???

I have some patents...

http://www.take5inc.com/dave-korpi-patents/

Non-profit? Really? If you want to donate your rights and profits to others, go right ahead, but most entrepreneurs tend to favor acquisition of personal capital -- which is illegal in a non-profit.

Anyhoo, filing an LLC is inexpensive, simple and quick. Whether you have a valuable invention (potentially patentable) is secondary to the question of whether there is any actual market for your product. If it takes three years to obtain a patent and the market has already been saturated by competitors who read your utility patent application upon its publication, your patent will be essentially worthless.

Having an invention "search" result is no guarantee that it will be patentable or non-patentable - only the examiners can technically tell you the answer to that. As Dave mentions, you can do some preliminary searching on your own. Yes, the USPTO doesn't even read your provisional, let alone examine it. At a year and a day (or soon thereafter, once it is clear no utility application was filed with any reference to the provisional) it could go immediately into the shredder, having never been read by anybody.

That said, it is almost CERTAINLY a good idea to have an attorney help explain to you the difference between debt and equity (e.g., you don't have to ever pay back equity investors), and how to structure your organization to avoid personal liability, what insurance you need, what management you should hire, what sort of incentives they can be given, etc.

@Dave: It isn't that patent attorneys all "hate" what you're trying to do here, just that you often fail to appreciate the thrust of the question and you simply paste your 500-word dissertation about "inventions in general", which can be considered a violation of Community Guidelines (i.e., spam). For instance, here the question already mentions that he has filed a provisional, yet you ask "have you heard of the provisional?" and discuss it for several paragraphs. If you could just tailor your answers as an attempt to answer the actual question, rather than pile on some encyclopedia of mostly unrelated stuff, it would generate a higher qualify of answers and many would undoubtedly appreciate it.

If you go to the offices of your city or county, they will give you the forms to fill out. They will consist of license application, tax ememption forms and so forth. Yes, it's a pain, but just think about how good that will make you feel about yourself. I think that is FANTASTIC! Also, you can contact the Small Business Administration on the web, and they can lead you to all the information you need, and possible lenders and links to the Department of Commerce. There's an absolute TON of info. for you out there. Hope this helped.

Since you can't take financial risks right now, it seems that you should concentrate on selling your idea, instead of being the one that develops it.