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.
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
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