Scams in the Invention Promotion Industry

An aspiring inventor often hears ads on TV and on the radio offering help for patenting and/or marketing inventions. Be extremely careful who you hire to help commercialize an idea. There are a lot of scams out there. This blog is the story of what has befallen a large number of uninformed inventors that hired American Inventors Corporation (AIC) to help them obtain patents. This story is from the 1990's, but just recently one of the patent attorneys complicit in the AIC scam was barred from prosecuting patents.

AIC solicited individuals to submit their ideas and offered a free patent search. They would tell each potential client that their idea had great commercial potential, and in a sales presentation offer to help the customer obtain a patent and then to promote the patent to manufacturers. In a contract signed by the customer AIC claimed they would obtain a "patent" for the customer for a fixed fee or a fee plus a percentage of royalties. The fee was refundable if a patent did not issue. No mention was made of the type of patent to be obtained. AIC was to hire a patent attorney or patent agent, and to supervise the application process. Direct communication between the customer and patent attorney was discouraged. When a patent application had been drafted, the company presented it to the customer for signature. Sound good?

AIC would forward the inventors disclosure to a patent attorney , Leon Gilden, requesting a design patent. A design patent protects only the decorative features of a product and does not protect the structural or utilitarian features. The patent attorney added decorative features to drawings on the customer's application (drawings the inventor did not submit) and filed design patents. Thus the customer did not get the patent protection of his idea that he sought and thought was getting. The design patents, which inevitably issued, were worthless.

The patent attorney, Leon Gilden, was punished for taking part in this scam with a 5 month suspension of his licence to represent clients before the patent office. AIC then hired another patent attorney, S. Michael Bender, to prepare and prosecute over 1000 design patents, many left over from the Gilden fiasco. Bender has been excluded from prosecuting patents before the patent office in an appeal of such sentence by a lower court. To read the whole proceedings see:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/gcounsel/docs/06-1243.pdf

As far as I know, the company has not been punished for this scam. If you have questions about the legitimacy of an invention promoter or need guidance in how to proceed with the invention process, I suggest you become a member at http://www.inventored.org/ which is an email forum. You can post a question that is sent to all members and you will get answers by email.

Until the next post,

Vernon Sandel

Ideas and Invention

When asked what I do for a living (in spite of my age I do get asked that) one of the things I always mention is that I have a patented product that I am selling on the internet. (http://www.bowstabilizer.net/) This usually brings an expression of awe or admiration that is undeserved. True, most people have not patented an idea, but basically everyone has the capacity to come up with ideas that could be patented and marketable. You don't need an advanced education or a lot of creativity. If you have ever been frustrated in the use of a product, find a better way and you have a potentially marketable idea.

Just recently as I was trimming my lawn with a string trimmer, I tapped the hub on the ground to draw out new string but nothing happened. A quick examination of the hub showed that dirt had clogged the mechanism. I had to stop the trimming, take the hub/spool system apart and clean it so it would work again--frustration! There must be a better way to extend the string. After thinking about it a few days an idea occurred to me how the problem of dirt clogging the mechanism could be totally eliminated. A prototype is presently under construction. If it works, the next step is to do a patent search to see if there is anything like it in the patent literature. If there isn't, I will write up a provisional patent application and submit it. The cost is only $100.00 and a lot of my time. But the provisional patent application gives me a year to try to sell the idea to a manufacturer. This is the poor man's way to market an idea. If my prototype convinces a manufacturer that he wants the patent he can pay for the filing of a utility patent.

You can see how easy it is to come up with a potentially marketable idea. Why is it then that more people do not try to capitalize on their ideas? First of all is lack of confidence. Is it really a good idea? We tend to elevate OUR ideas in our minds, sometimes to the extreme. If you have an idea that you think might be worth while pursuing, talk to someone, preferably a professional such as an engineer in the field of your idea, to get a second opinion. You should have a privacy statement for him to sign. If you still feel your idea has merit, do a patent search at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html. This is very much like doing a keyword search on Google. If this turns up nothing that is similar to your idea, it may be patentable. This search should not be considered a true patent search, only an indication that the idea is worth pursuing.

It is at this point that you really need to consider whether you are willing and able to carry through with the idea as the process can get very expensive from here. Up to this point you have not occurred any significant costs. Next, you will need to try out your idea. If you have the skills, making a prototype yourself may not be very costly. Otherwise, hiring a company or person to construct a prototype can be expensive. One resource which may help keep costs down is your local college. If you can talk a professor into letting a student take on making the prototype as a senior project, you may be able to save labor costs, but you must follow closely the person doing the work to make sure there are no misconceptions in what is to be built. I have found that what I picture in my mind in the construction of a prototype is often not possible or practical. Even scale drawings, while very useful, are often not sufficient to anticipate many problems.

If you have a prototype that works and truly does solve a problem or provide a useful function, the battle is half won. At this point it is time to consult a patent professional. Do not fall for the advertisements on TV offering help in patenting your idea! Many of them are scams that will promise much and deliver little. Check with your local college or a local company that is producing a new product, or the patent office at http://des.uspto.gov/OEDCI/ for suggested patent attorneys or agents.

The services of a patent professional can run as much as $15,000 to procure a utility patent. If you cannot afford the cost, you have two options. The first is to find someone who will finance the patent work for a fraction of the profits that ensue. The second is to do it yourself. The Patent Office has manuals describing the overall process of writing and applying for a patent, but they are written in legalese that I found very hard to follow. I found that examining a number of patents (downloaded from the patent search) to be more instructive.

Anyone who is capable of writing a description of their invention and describing how it works should be capable of producing a provisional patent application. Just follow the format of the specification section of other patents in your search. You do not need formal drawings, only sketches. Be sure to label each part with a number and describe it in the specification. The description MUST be clear enough for a person knowledgable in the field to understand what the invention is and how it works, and the advantages you claim over previously disclosed inventions. There is no need to draft claims or have approved mechanical drawings.

The provisional patent application allows you to claim "patent pending" status while you try to sell your idea, but you must file a utility patent application within one year. If you need to find a company or an investor to finance the patent application, work fast because the year passes quickly and it will take time to draft a proper utility patent.

Let me give you another example of a simple idea that has led to a successful business. I met Martin Tervo at our local hardware store a couple weeks ago. He recognized that it was difficult to put up hangers on a concrete or block wall. Truditional hangers, like coat hooks, utility hangers for shovels, brooms, garden tools, ladders, etc. are made for installation in wood. Some may be adaptable for concrete, but it involves drilling multiple holes. Mr. tervo invented simple system for installation of such hooks using a single hole and glue. A 1/2" hole is drilled in the concrete. A hook that is formed on a plastic base with a 1/2" tube is inserted into the hole in the concrete. Inside the tube is a packet of glue and a plastic plug. The hook is set perminantly in the hole by tapping the plug into the tube which ruptures the glue packet. Glue flows around the outside of the tube and upon setting firmly holds the tube and the attached hook to the concrete, a simple and elegant solution to the problem of setting a hook in concrete. Check out his web site at http://www.tapset.com/ to see the idea in action.

Internet Marketing Problems

The greatest problem I had in learning about internet marketing is information overload. Once you download a free report or ebook, you get all sorts of emails offering more free reports, informational videos, or memberships. When you click on a link in the email you are taken to a "squeeze page" which requires you to give your name and email address to get the media. When you fill in the form you are sent an email confirming your desire to receive information. Before you get the free information you are sent to a page offering an "incredible" price on another ebook, updated membership, or whatever. Whether or not you buy, you may be sent to another advertisement or two. By the time you are done going through all these advertisements you don't know where you are to get the free media. In the case of memberships, each one has a user name and password. When you get done with all this you don't know where you have been or what you have purchased! If you respond to a free offering keep a log of the url of the site and the name of the person or company making the offering. Then go to your "Documents" file and make a new folder with the name of the person or company making the offering. Put anything you download in that file. Organization is the name of the game, otherwise much of the information you obtain will be lost. Organization is one of my weak points that I have to work on.

Many of the Internet marketing firms will offer free affiliate memberships. These often pay in excess of 50% commissions on anything they sell. You don't need a web site to obtain these commissions, you only have to refer people to the web site. This can be done by placing ads on the search engines. You buy an ad that is placed when someone searches on a key word or phrase like "work at home", or "make money". You have to bid for placement of your ad. The more you are willing to pay, the closer to the top of the first search page of the key phrase your ad will be. You do not pay for the presentation of your ad, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad and are sent to the site you are advertising. This is called pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. All of the major search engines have PPC advertising. These are the "sponsored" ads you see when you make a search. The possibilities here fascinate me. Maybe I will give it a try.

There is a site www.clickbank.com that has over 10,000 products that you can market as an affiliate. It costs nothing to become a member of Click Bank to seek those offering affiliates. The reality is that the most popular affiliate programs already have too many affiliates driving up the cost of PPC advertising, so you have to find a "nitch" where there is demand for the product, but with relatively few affiliates. Once you decide what affiliates you want to promote, you write down all the keywords that a person might search under to find the product you are promoting. Google will help you with this. Click on the link: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
I have started a campeigh with Yahoo Search Marketing because my web site host offered $50 free toward a campeigh, though I had to contribute $5 as well. Since my web site http://www.bowstabilizer.net was already no. 1 on the Yahoo "organic" or free search results, there was no point in paying for an ad to popularize that site. I put up another site advertising my Compound Bow Rest & Holder and advertised the new web site. The keywords I chose, bowhunting informaion, are not very popular, so it only cost me 10 cents per click on my ad, which appeared on the first page of the search results of that keyword phrase. This was just a trial to see how the system worked, and it did not drive much traffic to my site.

I think this story is now complete, so I think I will start another topic next. Income tax is coming up shortly so it may be a while.

Vernon Sandel

Internet Marketing 101

Getting Traffic to My Web Site

Having a web site does not mean that anyone will be able to find it. With no traffic to my site I recognized that not only did the Compound Bow Rest & Holder needed to be marketed, but also the web site (http://www.bowstabilizer.net) had to be marketed as well. I had no idea how to go about this. Fortunately, about in Nov 2006 I ran across this advertisement:

I ended up purchasing an ebook in addition to the free material. Although both were helpful, I was too green to put into practice the things they were teaching. What was even more helpful was the flood of emails I got and continue to get advertising ebooks, video courses, and teleconferences, many free but several purchased, which gradually gave me a reasonably good idea of how to drive traffic to my web site.

In a nut shell I learned that first of all the web site had to be optimized for the keywords that one would use to find my site, search engine optimization (SEO). Since the Compound Bow Rest & Holder holds a bow, steadies a bow, and acts as a steady rest, the most relevant keywords were bow steady rest, bow rest, bow stabilizer, and bow holder. To get higher ranking on the search engines, these keywords needed to be used frequently on the title of my site, in the headlines of my site, and in the body of my site. Furthermore, they needed to be listed in the "meta tags" of my site. Meta tags are a list of keywords that are listed at the beginning of the web site program but which do not show up when someone comes to your site. The search engines use these meta tags to help decide which keywords are relevant to the site. These are not the only factors that determine the position your site will show up when someone searches on one of your keywords, but they are important. With this information alone, I was able to become no.1 in both Google and Yahoo search under "bow stabilizer". I am no. 1 under the search term "bow rest" and no.3 under "bow holder" in Yahoo. When I searched under "bow steady rest" didn't even find my site within the first three pages. Looking at my meta tags, I had forgotten to list "bow steady rest". As you can see, meta tags are important. The omission was corrected today.

Google is a completely different situation from Yahoo. Searching under "bow rest" in Google I found my site on page 7. It is widely known that they take into consideration the number and "quality" of incoming links in determining a site's ranking in a given search. If your site has incoming links (a reference that sends the web surfer to your site) from a popular web site, it will give you a higher position on any given search. Getting links is much more difficult than adding keywords to meta tags or adjusting web site content to reflect keywords. You can buy links from some web sites or you can solicit mutual links with other web sites. I have not done this yet.

One of the most valuable things I learned was the existence of an awesome web site that provides many invaluable functions to web site owners. There you can find out which search engines have indexed your site, get an analysis of your web site and instructions to help you improve your search engine placement (search engine optimization, SEO), check your web site's search engine rank, and your site's popularity. They also have utilities to generate meta tags and to "crunch" (make smaller) JPG and GIF files so your site will load faster. All this free! Bookmark this site!

I also learned that email marketing is the way to sell a product. Even with traffic to your web site your conversion rate to a sale is usually quite abysmal. It usually takes at least several contacts by email before you entice a person to buy your product. But first you need an "opt in" list of email addresses. This list is usually obtained by offering something free, usually information, for which the person has to give his email address. Once a list is obtained, emails are sent advertising your product(s). The whole process is automated by an auto-responder program which you can buy or rent. The auto-responder will store the email addresses, confirm the opt in of the person by email, send the information packet, and then allow you to post email letters to everyone in your list. For more information on list building visit List Dot Com.

Getting traffic to a new web site through the search engines is a slow process. Even if your site's host has a program to submit your site to the search engines, you may not be indexed. Although my host claimed to submit my site to over 300 search engines, and later I personally submitted my bowstabilizer.net site to MSN search, it never did get indexed. Apparently you have to be persistent, and then your site may "drop off" a search engine for no apparent reason. Your site should be submitted to the search engines once a month to maintain your listings.

The fastest way to get traffic to a new web site is "pay-per-click" (PPC) advertising. This is sort of an auction in which you bid on keywords that someone would use to search for your site. The ads appear on the sponsored areas of a search page, at the top and right side. Each time a person clicks on your ad you pay the bid amount. The problem with pay per click is that when you bid you do not know what position your ad will appear. The higher the bid and the greater the click through rate (percentage of presentations that get clicked), the closer to the top in general, but with Google other factors also are considered such as the quality of the landing page (page to which the ad points). You set up an account, set the amount you are willing to spend each day, the amount you will pay for a click, and the set the time your ad will start showing. To set up an account, go to the search engine you wish to purchase an ad and search under "pay-per-click", but before you do you should visit this blog. It contains an ebook and a number of videos that will give you more information than you ever wanted to know about PPC advertising.

Well, that is a summary of what I have learned so far. While going through all this I became interested in affiliate marketing. This is a way to make money on the Internet with no product to sell, no shipping, and no customer support. You merely drive traffic to other people's web sites. If they buy something there you get a commission. Perhaps this will be the topic of my next blog.

Vernon Sandel

Marketing 101-- What not to do.

I regretted that I did not get any Bow Rests ready for the Oct. 1 opening of bow season, but by October 15 I had fifteen ready for sale. Wanting to see what value people would put on the Bow Rest I put one on a seven day auction on Ebay with a starting bid of $39.95. After three days there were no bids, but 15 people were watching the item, encouraging I
My Ebay pictures
thought. Then the first bid came in at the minimum. Later I learned that the bid was by a friend who had wanted a Bow Rest and wanted to get the bidding started, "stir the pot" as he described it. Well, it turned out that he bought it for the minimum bid. Next I resubmitted as a seven day auction with a minimum bid of $0.99 and asked my friends not to bid so I could see what value people in general put on my product.

Unfortunately, this time there were about 30 watchers, but no bidders until the last day. It actually went for $1.04, just two bids! This was revealing indeed. When I show bow hunters these pictures in person, the usual response is "Looks like a great idea." Why then were people unwilling to place a reasonable value on the Bow Rest?

What did I learn from this experience? Apparently Ebay is not the place to introduce a new idea or product. Lesson number two: PayPal sent an email asking whether I wanted to accept the bid of a person with no feedback, and I foolishly said yes. This person had nothing to gain by sending a report since he had no feedback record to spoil. Therefore why bother to send a report?

How could I get my message out? All my sales (all three of them) were to people who knew me and were aware of my success with the Bow Rest. Being 73 years of age, almost all my friends had given up bow hunting long ago. I figured I needed a web site where I could present the Bow rest to the public in general. Never having had a web site before, I naively assumed that if you put up a web site, people will find it using the search engines and I would have a national market for the Bow Rest. I found a hosting company that offered to register a domain name, prepare a web site, and submit the site to the search engines for only $80 per month. With my limited resources this sounded pretty good.

The domain name bowrest.com was taken, but I was told that my second choice, bowstabilizer.com was available. By email I sent in pictures of my bow rest, a description of what it does and how it works, and its features (shoot more accurately, hold a draw longer, minimizes game spooking movement, etc.). What I got was a web site that had none of my pictures or information and which was totally inappropriate. Fortunately they had a web modification program that was very good. In two weeks of trial and error I was able to come up with a reasonable web site.

I published it to the web, but was unable to get to it by typing the url into my browser. Instead I got a site offering the domain name for sale for $900. When I complained to customer service, I was told to wait and they would get the domain for me. I certainly knew they would not pay $900 for it, but I trusted that they were true to their word. Days went by, more calls to customer service, but still no results. Finally I talked to someone who actually looked into the situation and recognized that the domain name was not available. The person who told me bowstabilizer.com was available had erred. Bowstabilizer.net was a suggested alternative and I accepted it. Finally, after three weeks the web site was finally on line (www.bowstabilizer.net).

I soon realized that even a week after the hosting company submitted my url to the search engines, only on Yahoo was I able to find my site when searching for Compound Bow Rest & Holder, and it was on page four. When I search for a given term I rarely look past the first page for sites. So how do you get traffic to your site? I saw that I had a lot to learn.

Continued on the next post.

Manufacturing the Bow Rest

(I have been laid up with the flu, too sick to do much of anything for the past week, hence the lack of a post.)

In October, 2005 I had contracted to have a 34’x60’ metal building put up for a workshop. This was to free up our basement and garage which was cluttered with snow blower, riding lawn mower, small garden tractor, motorcycle and tools. I had no idea what I was going to do with all that shop space at that time, but I wanted to move into the workshop before winter so I could garage our vehicles. Mother Nature poured frozen water on that plan; two days before a cement pad was to be poured we got eight inches of snow. That put the building on hold until spring.

From my last post you will recall that by the spring time I had decided to manufacture the Compound Bow Rest and Holder myself on a small (500 units) scale and try to market them. The shop building I had already contracted seemed like an ideal “factory”, only a mile from our house. I wanted to have some inventory of the Bow Rest in time for bow hunting season which started October 1. While my shop was being built, I sought sources of supply. My concept at that time was to contract out to have pieces made, and I would basically put the Bow Rests together, paint and package them and they would be ready for shipment. How naïve! The quotes that came back for producing the parts were so high that each Bow Rest would cost me about $100 by the time it was ready to ship. This was more than I could charge, and it left nothing for profit.

When reality set in, the whole tactic changed. I was going to have to manufacture the parts myself, and to do so I would need machines to make the parts consistent and interchangeable. It took the next three months of frenzied activity to first design, and then to build the jigs and machines. Most of them failed to perform satisfactorily as first conceived, and some went through as many as five model changes before being deemed satisfactory. Much more ingenuity and creativity went into this activity than into the invention itself! I gained a new appreciation for those who provide tooling for manufacturing.

The shop building was ready for occupancy about July 20, and after moving in the setting up of tools, jigs and my machines used up August. I hired a friend from our church, a recovering alcoholic who had been dry for 18 months, to help me with production work. The weekend before he was to start he fell off the wagon and did not show up on Monday morning. I stopped at his house to see why and he was falling down drunk. I drove him to a hospital 30 miles away to dry out, but that ended his employment before it started. Fortunately my son came for a month long visit from California shortly thereafter, and between the two of us we were able to make parts for at least 100 Bow Rests. Approximately 20 were assembled, painted and ready to be boxed. We learned by adding up the time for each step in the manufacturing process that I took slightly more than 4 hours to manufacture a boxed bow rest. That is if nothing broke down during the process, which turned out to be a totally unreasonable assumption.

The positive side of doing my own manufacturing was that people were very interested in seeing how the various machines worked. All were powered by muscle, and particularly children had a ball making metal "belt loops", bending loops in 3/16" rod for the spreader, and cutting 1/4" steel rod for the boom. One 12 year old remarked after trying several of the machines, "This is the best day of my life!" Touring the "factory" created a lot of local interest in the Bow Rest.

The costs for raw materials in the manufacture was very reasonable, coming in at around $9.17 per Bow Rest, but the packaging cost even more, $15. This is because two “cookie cutters” for cutting the cardboard box and an insert had to be made. The 8”x48”x2” boxes and inserts themselves cost only $1.20, but when the cost of the cutters was added in the cost per box for a 500 lot was $12. This was discouraging! Putting a label on the boxes with pictures and description would have been another $5.45 per box if done by the box maker. This is because the major cost for the label is setup, and 500 boxes is a very small run. I opted to have self-stick labels printed for $3.25 each and put them on myself. Total cost then for a boxed Bow Rest: approximately $24 plus a half day’s work.

Continued in my next post.

The Vultures Circle

Continued from my January 24 post.

A patent is only a nice decoration unless you can make money with it. As soon as the patent issued I started getting mail from companies that want to represent you in presenting your patent for licensing. Within two weeks I must have gotten ten of them. Their tactic:

1. Flatter-“We have chosen your patent from among thousands as one that has great commercial appeal.”
2. The hook-“These are products that we have helped introduce to the market”, with pictures. “We believe your invention has similar potential.”
3. The price- Their fees for services range from up front fees of $600-$35,000, plus from 5-30% of royalties, but you did not learn their prices until you called them and endured the hard sell.

The experience reminded me of a common scene in western movies, vultures circling over a dead or dying critter. I am sure some of the companies were legitimate and do give valuable service for your money, but being a skeptic, I checked better business bureaus and on line complaints. What I found left me skeptical of all of them. Every one of them I investigated had numerous complaints by people who felt they were ripped off. Not wanting to join the ripped off club, I put together a brochure with pictures of the Compound Bow Rest and Holder and a description of what it does and how it works. Then I searched Google for web sites of companies that sell bow hunting equipment, and sent emails from their contact page with pictures I had taken for the brochure. Most did not even answer, but those that did basically said to get the Bow Rest manufactured, and then contact us. One company did send a letter saying that they were looking into licensing the patent, but I never herd further from them.

Since I had tried my tactic for four months and failed, I thought perhaps I would try one of the companies that had originally contacted me about licensing. I got a letter from one of the cheaper services that had contacted me previously, offering me a special deal. For only $50 they would represent me to manufacturers for licensing. If they got a hit they would share in the royalties. This sounded like a pretty good deal to me. At least they think enough of my invention to put some of their time and money into seeking a license. I sent them my brochure so they could reproduce it and also have additional information concerning the invention in addition to the patent.

Two months went by and I had heard nothing from the company. When I called I talked with someone who had no knowledge of me or my invention. I was told to wait another month and I would hear from them. I did. I got a letter stating “Sorry, nobody was interested in your invention.” No explanation of what they had done or who they had contacted. Hmmmm! It sounded to me like I may have been scammed out of $50. I’ll bet they did nothing. They probably sent the same offer out to all the inventors as a follow up to their first letter. A $50 fee for nothing is as good as $600 for time and effort on their part. But as I admitted earlier, I am a skeptic. They could have done something on my behalf and I would never know.

Shortly after this experience I received a letter with another letter with an interesting offer. This company offered to make the product in China (they have offices both in China and the US) and they would market the product for 15% of the net profits, with 85 going to me. They wanted $13,750 for “tooling”, $9,212.50 upon signing a contract and $4537.50 when production was ready. While this was interesting, it was too risky considering that I would have to borrow the money for tooling. I decided I would rather take my chances making the product myself and introduce it in the market on a small scale rather than jump into an enterprise with both feet. Perhaps it won’t sell. Besides, could I trust this company since all of the risk is mine, but they get paid up front? Like I said, I am a skeptic.

Continued in the next post.

Patent on a Shoe String

Continued from my last post.

The clock was ticking. I had one year from the filing date of the provisional patent, June 5, 2002 to file my utility patent application. Since I fired my first patent attorney, where do I find another one whose fees fit the budget of a senior citizen on a fixed income? I checked with a couple, both said that their fee would be upwards of $8,000, and the lower retainer of the two was $2,500. I explained that a patent search had been made and a provisional patent filed, so all that was needed were the drawings and claims. Their retort was that in order to do a good job they would have to be familiar with previous patent literature and understand the present invention thoroughly. At $250 per hour (including coffee breaks I presume) it doesn’t take long to run up an $8,000 bill.

I knew I could produce the drawings with the help of a local artist. After downloading the instructions from the Patent Office web site, I proceeded to make the drawings according to their specifications, but then out sourced the free hand drawing at a cost of $120. The provisional patent manuscript was revamped to accord with the part numbers on the drawings. Writing the claims, however, concerned me. It is the claims that prevent infringement of your patent, and if not well written to cover all the loopholes your patent may be worthless.

I heard from a friend who teaches at the local Michigan Technological University that one of the university employees had recently been licensed as a patent agent. While not an attorney, he can represent others in dealings with the Patent and Trademark Office. The “recent” label worried me a bit but I contacted him and asked if he would be willing to write my claims for a fee. He declined but offered to act as a consultant for free.

Armed with the promise of his help and an intense reading of the claims of many patents, I felt confident I could write claims that would protect my invention. After innumerable rewrites and three consultations with the patent agent I was confident that the claims were air tight. The patent application was ready for filing. The manuscript along with several forms and a filing fee of $150 was sent on May 30, 2003. It arrived at the Patent Office on May 30, just six days before the deadline! Then began the long wait for the “first reading”, the report back from the patent examiner.

In August, 2004 I received a very official looking manila envelop from the Patent Office. With trepidation I opened it to find that all my claims had been denied. I was devastated! While I had been warned that this denial often occurs, I had been confident that my claims were thorough, reasonable, and did not infringe on the claims of any other patent. The examiner also had the audacity to say, “It is obvious that the applicant is not knowledgeable in the art of writing claims. It is strongly advised that he consult a patent attorney.”

The examiner’s telephone number was included in the report so I call asking him what was wrong with my claims. The examiner’s name was Ramon O. Ramirez, and to my surprise he was friendly, helpful and a very nice person. I was expecting an ogre. He said there were two problems with my claims:

1. The claims should describe what the invention is, not what it does.
2. Each claim should describe only a single entity, some of yours describe multiple entities.

I asked Mr. Ramirez if he would critique a new set of claims on an informal basis before the final submission and he agreed. With these two simple comments I was able to rewrite the claims and fax them to him. Several days later he called to say that if two words were changed he would accept my eleven claims. The changes were made in the manuscript and it was resubmitted. What a difference a little knowledge can make! True to his word, in January, 2005 I received a Notice of Allowance. I was home free! Well, not exactly free, along with the Notice was a $700 bill for the issuance of the patent. It issued on September 27, 2005 and I received a copy of patent no. 6,948,690 in a beautiful cover with the gold seal of the Patent and Trademark Office along with the director’s signature.

Patent Pending

Continued from my Jan 17 post.

Because the bow steady rest helped my shooting accuracy so dramatically, I figured perhaps there would be a market for such an item. The US Patent Office has a search site (http://www.uspto.gov/patft/) to allow inventors to search by keyword through the patent literature for patents with similar functionality. A thorough search indicated that the idea was novel and thus patentable. I then searched for a patent attorney using Google, and from the names provided chose a patent attorney who also had a mechanical engineering degree. When I contacted him and described my invention I was given a price of $1,850 to write a provisional patent, and then was told that the utility patent would only cost about $1,000 more. I paid the $1,800 and sent him every bit of information I could think of concerning the bow steady rest along with a few pages of drawings. What I got back from him indicated that he either he did not take the time or was unable to understand what the invention was all about. The draft of the provisional patent application was so bad that rather than try to correct it, I completely rewrote it. After submitting it to the attorney I got a bill for $250 for "revisions". When I protested that charges for revisions were not in his price quote, he claimed it was for retyping the manuscript. Since my draft of the provisional patent application contained only 1,800 words, even a moderately competent typist could do the typing in an hour. It was clear working with this guy was going to be expensive, so I fired him and submitted my draft to the patent office. A provisional patent application is basically a description of the invention without any claims. Anyone can write one. A patent examiner doesn't even read it when it is submitted. What it does is give you a submission date for the idea and buys you one year of time to produce a real patent (a utility patent). At this stage if you want to market your product you can claim "patent pending" status. I had no intention of marketing the bow steady rest myself. To license an idea you need a utility patent, and I had only one year to come up with one. The saga continues with the next post.

Vernon Sandel

Anatomy of a Patent

When I was younger I thought that at 73 years of age I would be spending my time relaxing, watching TV, and doing the "Honey dos". Instead the last five or six years have been some of the busiest in my life. At least that's the way it seems to me now. Of course at this age one is never too busy to take a nap when necessary.

There are so many things to be done before the pall bearers carry me to the hearse! First, there is the Compound Bow Rest & Holder. This story begins roughly six years ago. I was an avid bow hunter (white tail deer) for a number of years, but as I weakened with age, I could not consistently group my arrows within a 6" circle even when shooting at 15 yards. Since this is the minimum accuracy I consider necessary for bow hunting to avoid wounding instead of killing, something had to be done to improve accuracy or I had to give up bow hunting. I came up with the idea of a boom system that straps to a tree with ratchet straps, is hinged to allow the boom to swing horizontally, and a support system that attaches to the bow at the riser and steadies the bow.

Immediately my shooting accuracy increased dramatically. I could actually hold my sights on a bulls eye for seconds without drifting off. At 22 yards I had to shoot successive arrows at different spots on my target because I destroyed several arrows by hitting the first with the second. I had a friend try it, and his arrow struck dead center of the bulls eye. (I was perplexed by his reaction, he was amazed but refused to shoot again.)

From that time on I never missed a deer with the bow. I wish I could say that I never wounded one either, but unfortunately I cannot. In 2004 I shot a 6 or 8 point buck at 18 yards from a 20' tree stand. At the time I was using mechanical broadheads (the type that open up upon impact) because they fly truer than the fixed broadheads. However, the down side of the mechanicals is that some of the penetrating power is lost in opening the broadhead. Since I hunt with a low draw weight of 50 lbs, the arrow apparently only penetrated one lung. I followed a blood trail for 3/4 mile, and then lost it. A deer can run a long ways on one lung. Also, that was the only deer I have ever shot where I did not find the arrow. I presume I hit a rib and the arrow wedged in tightly.

I greatly regret this experience, and I have since used only fixed broadheads. I never did get a deer that year.

The story continues in the next blog.