Patent/invention Question

It's expensive. Low thousands to maybe 10K for UK patent assuming you
employ patent attorneys throughout. You will probably able to get 0.5hrs of
time free with an attorney who will be able to tell you whether it's
actually patentable; not everything is.

If you speak to anyone about it before a patent is filed make sure they
sign a NDA (Non-disclosure agreement). If you've told anyone without one of
these and it's in the public domain it's no longer patentable.

Sometimes it's not worth the expense of patenting. If you can get to market
quickly, get good market share, you might be able to exit before anyone
else has a chance to copy it. Depends how complicated it is, natch. Having
said that you'll have a much better chance of getting a big company
interested if you have a patent filed.

Oh, and someone probably has thought of it. You can do searches yourself
here:

http://gb.espacenet.com/


Don't assume just because you don't find it, that it doesn't exist. You
might not have used the right search term, but it might be able to tell you
quickly whether it's already been done and save you time/money.

 

Something to do with the post mark showing the date and meaning you
could then open it in front of doubting witnesses at a later date and
go...

"Voila! Here in this ancient postmarked envelope I have my
description of X so I thought of it before Y on Z date.

 

If that's all he does it would be a good idea for him to keep the envelope
in a safe place so that in a couple of years time when something similar
appears on the market, which is a run-away success, the OP can open the
envelope, and remind himself what a wasted opportunity it was. Optionally
he could make some paper planes.

 

Thinking of it first is pretty much irrelevant if he doesn't patent it and
someone else has the same idea independently.

 

It might be sufficient to count as prior art, and invalidate the
subsequent patent.

 

If it were in the public domain, everyone would be prevented from patenting
it because of prior art, but that would include the bloke who thought of it
first. If, on the other hand, it were still in the envelope all he's done
is wasted a stamp.

 

Simian secured a place in history by writing:

Show that he had the idea first, should he discuss it with a company that
subsequently decides to try and nick it. Of course, if he doesn't discuss
it with anyone he will achieve nothing except a heightened sense of
popularity, on account of receiving more post than usual

 

# I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter...

 

Probably. I could never really understand it.