Is it as easy as writing up what my idea is, and sending it back to me via recorded delivery? Currently have 4 ideas which I personally think are pretty amazing and unheard of, not sure what to do about them though?
I think that in order to have any legal protection you need a patent. I think you can prevent anyone else from patenting it if you publish the idea but that wont prevent anyone else from building and selling it. I'm also in a similar position to you and would very much like to know if its possible to protect an idea without the expense and hassle of a patent lawyer. Moriquendi
AFAIK, you'd need to register a patent. there's online places that do it for you, but they cost a bit of money (a good bit). Also note that registering a patent in Europe doesn't mean that it's registered in, say the US or the Ukraine... and international patents DO cost a good bit.
As two of the ideas are government based (or could be), is it possible to sell the ideas to them for example?
There are two problems with that, one is that if you show anyone your idea before you get a patent they're likely to say " wow that's great, but why should we give you any money? You've just shown us your idea" The second is that as I understand it, showing off your idea before you apply for a patent makes getting a patent more difficult. Its a difficult situation. Moriquendi
you're looking at several difficulties. a) a philosophical idea doesn't qualify in most countries. b) a business method doesn't either. Basically - it needs to be an invention rather than an idea. selling it to government might be difficult, as the government actually ISSUES the patent (in most cases)... however, once you HAVE the patent (normally for a period of 20 years), you can sell, lease, rent, give it away, abandon it like you can with all other property. meaning you COULD theoretically sell it then... even to government, if you can find a sales pitch
At best (if you can demonstrate an unbroken chain all the way through to prove the idea was in the parcel at the time) sending something to yourself by recorded delivery can demonstrate prior art - i.e. that you already had the idea when someone else tries to patent it. That permits you to keep using the idea and may help you oppose their patent (not likely though - overturning a patent is very tricky at the best of times). First thing to do is check if it really is an original idea. Best way to do that (assuming the idea is for a thing) is to go to the European Patent Office at http://ep.espacenet.com and use the "Advanced Search" option. It's worth spending several hours doing this - patent searching is an absolute nightmare because they do not by their very nature lend themselves to google-style searching. If it is, the next thing to do is work out how much this idea is worth commercially. Are there other ways of doing the same thing? Are there people willing to pay money for what it is, and if so how much? How much will it cost to manufacture, and so what will your pay back time be? Don't rely on asking family/friends "would you buy one of these" - the answers are notoriously inaccurate. "How much would such-and-such be worth to you" is a little better, but still flawed. If both these conditions are satisfied, it's worth talking to a patent lawyer about whether the idea is worth taking forward. It is possible to do so yourself, but if you expect to make a significant amount of money from the idea it is worth protecting it properly as doing an amateur job will only make it easy for someone to challenge/overturn. This is NOT a cheap or easy way to protect an idea. If your idea isn't a thing (i.e. it is a concept - the Flying Spaghetti Monster for instance) you **may** be able to do something with trademarks, but that's about it. Otherwise you're totally stuffed, and the best you can do is make money out of it as fast as possible before someone else decides to copy it. That isn't as bad as it sounds - if you understand it thoroughly you should be able to make more money out of it than anyone else who doesn't, not to mention the fact that you will be doing it before them so get a head start. BTW, I do have some experience of this - my first patent (applied for through work in 2005) was published earlier this year and should hopefully be granted in another year or so, and I do a fair bit of searching to ensure we don't rip someone else's idea off by accident.
The problem with a patent, is that if someone were to infringe it you'd have to take legal action to defend it. This can be a very drawn out and very expensive process. Unfortunately if a larger company were to copy your idea, they could essentially "buy you out" - not literally buy you out of course, but by driving mitigation fees too high for you to counter they can get away scott free.
pdf27 has wise words. First: make sure it is a new idea. Most things we think of have been thought of before. Usually by smarter people. Second: just because it sounds like a good idea, does not mean it will work in practice. You may have to be the one to demonstrate that it actually works before you can get anyone interested. Note that most original internet business ideas were sold as already well-established, implemented and functioning businesses, not conceptual ideas. Third: patents are a bitch. They cost money to set up, even more money to set up in other countries, and craploads of money to defend in court. It is better to go open source. It worked for Linux and Arduino.
£600 to patent in the UK by yourself, but you need to know the legalease behind it all. You can pay the patent office to do a search for you £30. Europe patent - £15,000 to completion Worldwide - £60,000+ to completion. Total time to complete in the UK around 2-4 years, world 5 years. We had the guy in from the patent office in my Enterrpise lecture, they're nice guys in the Welsh office. Give them a call and see what they say
One comment: because the person doing the patent search will only have read your submission and so will not fully understand it, it is entirely possible that they will miss genuine prior art and come up with irrelevant patents as prior art. In the case of my patent application, the first search report came up with loads of examples of prior art which would invalidate our application. After we responded to the search report (pointing out that we were solving a completely different problem) they re-did it and found nothing at all relevant. Edit: just remembered that there is a significant fee involved in maintaining a patent - IIRC for worldwide ones it's of the order of £1000/year. If you look at the legal status of any particular patent on espacenet it's a good bet that a lot of them will have expired due to failure to pay the annual fee.
