Legalities of selling products to other companies

[1havnfun]

Congradulations
that worked out great

[wroughtnharv]

Well I'm going to start trying to sift through the candian and US databases and see if I can find a similar device that has already been patented. In the mean time I am going to go around and try to sell my original prototype and see if it looks to be a desirable contraption for anyone (I'll tell them its patent pending. pending on me applying for a patent :P)
if they seem popular I have to sit down and see how many of these I would have to sell to recoupe the costs of patenting and perhaps tooling to mass produce these things. If it looks viable I will start to look further into patenting my second slightly more complex prototype.

Thanks again guys, I'll let you know how it goes

Two things to keep in mind. The most important one is the more you show off your product the more put the ability to patent it at risk. So you need to have anyone that sees what you have sign a confidentiality/non-compete agreement.

The other thing is patent pending is not unlike the rattle of a rattlesnake. It's a warning that you're prepared to strike if threatened.

The reason we claim patent pending is to warn others that when they infringe on our idea they're are taking a serious risk. Because if and when we get a patent they are not only susceptible to being sued for infringing but all the profits they made and penalties for doing so.

If they see your idea and start producing it before you apply for the patent two very bad things happen. First is they can do it with impunity. Second, you can't get a patent.

Now they publish patent applications. But back in the day they didn't. So one of the games played was keeping the patent pending as long as possible. That way competitors wanting to find another way to skin the cat wouldn't know your claims and risked infringing if they brought out something similar.

[c wagner]

Thanks for the replies guys. Especially wroughtn's perspective as a patent holder.

Well, I decided to deliver the 2 prototypes that I finished yesterday for final testing by the guys who will be using it. After playing around with the machine a bit, the first thing out of the manager's mouth was " you need to patent that"
So we talked about that very thing, and as far as this manager was concerned I completely owned the idea of the machine and they were happy to simply have a working copy to save them the manual backache of doing the task by hand. I even mentioned selling this product to their direct competitors which he thought would be fine.

Today was an exciting day, I'm taking several detailed pictures of it tommorow and redoing my drawings on it to at least make it easier for me to reproduce it without much trouble.

How much does it cost to patent something harv? I think I might pursue that avenue if other companies show interest in this device.

Congrats, that's awesome when everyone is on the same page.
Keep us posted on how you make out with this venture.

[Freelance Fabber]

Thanks again harv, yea that was kind of my thoughts on claiming it's 'patent pending'.

Given the nature of this device I think I need to show it around a bit to see if there's any interest in it all before I start investing thousands, and years of time on a patent. It's going to be relatively expensive to produce as well so I'm not sure if anyone else would be willing to lay out the cash for this thing.

So my thoughts are to produce a few more of these things, a half dozen at the most, then go around localy and guage the response on them, sell a few perhaps with that conditional contract you mentioned and if it looks like they might be some decent interest I'll start with the patent process. I'm still sifting through the US and canadian patents to find something similar. Hopefully by the end of summer I'll be going forward on this!

[Bodybagger]

If you take a good demo to a record company and they tell you they aren't interested and wish you luck with your song, don't be surprised in the least if you hear someone else singing it on the radio 6 months later!

When money is involved, people always find a way of screwing each other over.

If you need eye surgery, you don't go to a family doctor. You go to an eye surgeon. If have in intellectual property issue, you don't just go to any lawyer (unless you want to hasten the screwing process). You go to a lawyer specializing in intellectual property.

In the mean time, you might want to read the material here:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-Scho...03/CourseHome/