OK chaps, essentially, I am not particularly interested in a US patent at the minute, why, because I am in the uk, ....

So you're not really serious about protecting this idea by limiting the geographical playing field to the UK. The only thing that would convince me that you are serious is a plan to comercialize the idea, make a pot of money, and exit the business when the copycats with the deep pockets show up.

BTW -- how is it that you got tossed from medical school?

 

No doubt, a company I had $50K invested in later had the technology stolen by AT&T who had far more resources to fight in court thus of course won.

It's all in the Judge and a matter of positive proof along with some luck, my recommendation is based on someone who actually won out over a major corporation with all the proof he had that he had originated the design and had it in production before the opposing party even planned to - not to mention the fact they were ruled to trying to rip off a smaler business.

The best you can do is simply go into production and grab what you can while you can.

Somebody WILL take your idea, and you WILL lose due to the "obvious to any practitioner in the field" clause of patents. It is pointless to try.

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You need to listen to people with MUCH more experience, there is not ONE case where a "little guy" patented an idea and fought a big company to be paid, and won. Patents are a losing proposition unless you are a Fortune 500 company. Remember, the companies you "expect" to be paid a million dollars from for your idea, spend OVER a Million dollars on lawyers PER YEAR simply to "steal little guy's ideas".

Microsoft is a case in point. Even against Norton, they simply used their technology for defrag in WinXP. The result? Rather than fight Norton (a huge company in it's own right) was purchased by Microsoft, and most of the employees fired, renamed the then subsidiary to Symantec. There are hundreds of examples involving Microsoft alone, let alone the other 499 Fortune 500 companies.

Publish your work, produce functional units and take the profit you can, somebody WILL take your idea, ESPECIALLY if you patent it, as you need to provide the details to obtain a patent, doing the enemies' work for them.

 

What psychic need is satisfied by trying to speak truth to the unconvicible. We should keep our counsel to ourselves and let him go on about his quest neither hindering nor abetting him in his folly.

 

Actually if you know how to play the game. patent infringement lawsuits can be a big business.

I support the law department at work. I wrote software to keep track of all of the cases against us.

We have one guy that sues us constantly for all types of patent infringements. I asked about him and was told he does this to a ton of companies. He buys up obscure patents and figures out how they can be applied against a given company. Most times he does not have a leg to stand on but he knows how to sue, using a magic number that makes him enough on the case but where the company just pays to have him go away.

 

Beats the pure <snip>l out of going to medical school -- Bahahaha

 

somebody WILL take your idea, ESPECIALLY if you patent it, as you need to provide the details to obtain a patent, doing the enemies' work for them.

Even if you don't patent it they'll just pay someone minimum wage to reverse engineer overnight.

 

Some serf from the subcontinent -- no doubt.

 

Actually if you know how to play the game. patent infringement lawsuits can be a big business.

I support the law department at work. I wrote software to keep track of all of the cases against us.

We have one guy that sues us constantly for all types of patent infringements. I asked about him and was told he does this to a ton of companies. He buys up obscure patents and figures out how they can be applied against a given company. Most times he does not have a leg to stand on but he knows how to sue, using a magic number that makes him enough on the case but where the company just pays to have him go away.

The inventor of the "pet rock" never got a patent for the concept, yet still became multi-millionaires rather quickly.

There are many products like this, such as the "Chia Pet" (also from the 70's).

 

It looks as if this topic has been done to death.