My answer . . . yes, it will. And it’s way too easy.

Now that you know that your product will be copied, how do you best protect your product from copycats?Conventional wisdom says you should get a patent. But as I’ve mentioned before, patents are only useful for blockbuster mass market products and licensing deals.

Your question should be, “How do I protect my non-patented invention?”

Actually, it’s less about your product, and more about the way you make, deliver, improve, and stand by your product . . . i.e. the business you’ve created around your product. It’s easy to copy your product, and factories in China are more than willing to do so. However, they can’t copy your business. They can’t copy the way you interact with customers. They can’t copy your distribution channels. They can’t copy your brand and reputation. They can’t copy your energy and ambition. They can’t copy your SEO skills (especially since their Engrish is poor).

So, yes, you can differentiate yourself with your product. But to protect your product, profit margins, and livelihood, you need to build a business around the product that CAN’T be replicated.

This is what Coke has done. This is what Crest Toothpaste has done. If you look in your pantry or bathroom, this is what most consumer goods manufacturers have done. They’ve built a product-based business that can’t be replicated.

Following the lead of these successful businesses, my company, Webko, has built a successful business around the Headset Buddy, and because of it, we are #1 in most of our markets.

Watch the full video clip on ABC’s Shark Tank site.

Good luck to Lisa and whatever she decides with her potential investors!

Bryan Daigle

So how can Billy get away with selling all these products and not protecting them? Here is his philosophy…

So many inventors think they are out to make millions of dollars. However, studies have shown that only 3% of patents are commercially viable (MIT study). So the number of products that are both commercially viable and make millions of dollars, is a very, VERY small number. For most inventors, you’re lucky to make a profit, and really lucky to earn an full-time income from a product.

That’s where Billy’s philosophy really kicks in. If you assume your product will only make at most $200,000 or less in sales per year (what 99.9999% of inventions make), then why spend $20,000-$40,000 applying for, protecting, and litigating for a patent? In fact, if you are like most inventors who sell their product in small quantities to niche markets, then you don’t necessarily need a patent. Why would a Chinese company or an American company want to make your product if you’re only selling less than $200,000 of it per year? It is not worth it for them to copy it.

Copycats and big companies only want blockbuster products with potential sales in the millions. So what may be a treasure to you, making $100,000 selling your product, is peanuts to a corporation. The trick to creating a successful product that sells well enough for you to earn a living is this . . . create a product in a niche big enough for you, but too small for anyone larger. For example, Billy spun off a line of metal detectors for hunters, so they can detect bird shot in their catch of the day. That’s a niche. That’s a product that sells well, but doesn’t need a patent.

I think it’s calming to know that if you create a good, niche product, then you don’t have to worry about all the money, time, and energy you would be wasting on a patent.

Using this philosophy, Billy has created 59 products that sell well enough for him to live the good life, but not well enough for it to be worth it for companies to copy his products.

- Bryan Daigle

Here’s a sample Pitch to America segment from September.

Once we have video of our inventors, we’ll definitely be posting that on our InventBay.com Blog.

Along with this great news, brings up the questions, “how were these individuals so lucky as to have their invention or business on NATIONAL television? Here are my thoughts on that . . .

Although each opportunity for publicity will be different, I think there are just a few simple things that entrepreneurs need to keep in mind in order to get publicity:

• Be persistent. I actually went to a presentation last night by 5-time Emmy Award winning reporting Shawne Duperon, and she said that in order to get something in the news, you need to pitch it 27 times. 27 TIMES! “I don’t have time for that,” you say. Well she also gave a shortcut. Build a relationship with a reporter and skip this waiting line. But to even build a relationship with someone will take persistence: going to networking events, calling, etc. So #1 reason these inventors are on TV tonight, they never gave up. They went to shows, they met people, they built those relationships.
• Energy. I know that energy definitely came into play with the Tiger Taco guys, Chris Miller and his partner. Those guys are full of energy and people just love being around them because of that. They radiate positive energy! For example, they gave InventBay expo staff members samples of their own products to help the unloading of boxes. And they helped stuff bags for the expo. And then they ran around the expo all weekend meeting everyone they could. To get publicity, it greatly helps to be enthusiastic (but not overly enthusiastic, that’s called crazy) about your product.

In my opinion, energy and persistence were the common variables in the publicity success of these inventors. Once you have publicity once, it’s much easier to get more, because that gives your product credibility in the eyes of journalists. So if you are lucky to get publicity, use it to your advantage.

Bryan Daigle

Just a few disclaimers. We looked at approved utility patents that were filed by independent inventors. In the definition of the USPTO, a patent is filed by an independent inventor if an individual is listed and not a company. Unfortunately, year by year data isn’t available before 1991. The year is the year that the application is approved, not the year it was submitted.

Actually, the data shows us one thing for sure – we peaked in the late 1990’s during the dot com boom. Since then, we have been on a slow and steady decline in the number of applications being approved, not because the USPTO isn’t approving enough, but just fewer applications are being submitted.

Inventor Patents vs Economy

We had a positive blip in 2006, but after that it was back to the usual decline.

So back to the original question: how closely does the economy relate to people inventing?

It appears that there may be a slight direct and positive correlation between GDP growth and approved patents, but there is a 2 year delay (see GDP growth in 1994 and patent peak in 1996, again GDP growth 2004 and patent peak in 2006). That makes sense that there would be a delay after the application is approved. A rough guideline is that patents take on average 2 years to get approved, which would account for the delay. So the answer appears to be that, yes, in a growing economy, more people will be creating inventions. In a sagging economy, fewer people will jump ship to create a risky invention.

However, the larger thing that this shows us is that relatively steady decline in patents from the late 1990’s. I have two theories of why this might have happened:

• The high-tech boom of the late 1990’s caused a slew of patent applications and approvals because everyone wanted a piece of the gold rush. Not only that, since internet technology was new, no one was sure what could be patented and what couldn’t. Since then, we’ve come to a better realization of what can be patented, thus the drop in patents being submitted and approved. (Patent approval rates as a percentage have actually decreased since 1998, also having some effect)
• Also, I think the mounting legal costs of filing and then PROTECTING patents is increasing. Because of this, fewer individuals have the resources necessary to pay a lawyer $10,000-$20,000 to file, and potentially hundreds of thousands to defend a patent if it is infringed.

So there you have it. When the economy is good, more people invent (albeit with a little lag).

I learned a great deal from putting on these events, the biggest which would attract up to 30 teams, or 450 individuals to come play, and several hundred spectators. We’d organize about 45 volunteers for an event like that, so we definitely had a LOT of help.

Never had I appreciated the experience of putting on a large, high-traffic event until 5 weeks ago, when IdeaTango was officially acquired by InventBay. Since then, my focus has been on only two things, the InventBay Expo, which we held last weekend, and launching them a new website within 3 weeks.

We launched the new website October 9th, with much help from my IdeaTango partners and our experience working together. This past weekend, October 18 & 19, 2008, we officially held the coming-out party (Quinciniera or Barmitsva as it is called in other cultures) for InventBay, in the only place big enough to hold us, Las Vegas, Nevada.

The expo was hosted at the Sands Expo, in Hall A, which has 178,000 sq feet of open space. Of course since this is our first year, we only filled up 1/2 the show floor with ~130 exhibitors + another 70 booths where people could sign up for local inventor associations.

Some valuable lessons that I learned when putting on tournaments, came in handy when being an integral part of this expo:

• You can never do something on this scale alone, so the ability to delegate is more important than any other factor.
• If something can go wrong, it will. Double-check and verify everything. For example, for one of our tournaments, the person who wrote up the tournament finals bracket left it at his house, and caused our Sunday playoffs to start an hour late. Eventually this led to us shortening the finals game because we didn’t have daylight. At our expo this year, Kinkos was scheduled to print up a bunch of stuff for us the day before the doors opened. I asked our guys to double check what they received. Well, Kinkos forgot to print our speaker bios and we had to go back and pick it up 7 hours later. Good thing we checked!
• Stuff will go wrong, and rather than say that was ____’s job, just take the responsibility. Do whatever you can to fix it, even if it sometimes costs money.
• Always throw a party. I was able to convince our executive team that we needed a mixer, networking-like event either Friday or Saturday. Thanks goodness, because some of the people we talked to said that they met “so and so” and because of our party, they’ll come back next year. It’s a great way to informally talk with exhibitors, speakers, VIP guests, because once those show doors open, you won’t have another opportunity.
• Have fun. This goes with the point above. No matter what, if people have fun at your event, most will come back. Of course you need things like qualified attendees and exhibitors, but having fun can make up for quite a bit.

Let me tell you, it was fun and emotionally fulfilling to be part of such a big event, but I’m glad it’s not happening again until next year!

- Bryan Daigle

]]> http://bryandaigle.com/inventors/putting-on-a-giant-expo/feed/ 0 http://bryandaigle.com/inventors/lighten-up-%e2%80%93-some-invention-trivia/ http://bryandaigle.com/inventors/lighten-up-%e2%80%93-some-invention-trivia/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:05:34 +0000 Bryan Daigle http://ideatango.wordpress.com/?p=89 Let us pay respect to the inventions of yesteryear.

Pager. Oh how we miss receiving messages via beeping noises and LCD screens. Invented in 1959, the pager completely revolutionized communications in the 80’s and 90’s. Motorola, the company that pioneered the field, helped the pager go mass market when it created a small receiver that would deliver a radio message immediately.

Perfume. All of us use perfumes every day, in the form of deodorants, sprays, after shaves and colognes. Have we ever stopped and thought about what the word “perfume” means? In Latin, “perfume” literally means “through smoke,” since perfumes originated with the burning of incense and herbs in ancient times.

Subways. For those lucky enough to use a subway (mass transportation is non-existing here in Dallas), you should be grateful to Alfred Beach, who built the first subway and patented the pneumatic transit system in 1865.

Metal Detectors. A crude form of the first metal detector was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, as a life-saving device for US President James Garfield. Don’t ask me how a metal detector can save someone’s life!

- Bryan Daigle
President & Founder of ideatango.com – the #1 site for inventors & invention ideas For more good info & advice, check out the official IdeaTango Blog

]]> http://bryandaigle.com/inventors/lighten-up-%e2%80%93-some-invention-trivia/feed/ 0 http://bryandaigle.com/inventors/find-what-people-want-conduct-an-idea-survey/ http://bryandaigle.com/inventors/find-what-people-want-conduct-an-idea-survey/#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:03:45 +0000 Bryan Daigle http://ideatango.wordpress.com/?p=88 Before your creativity comes into play and forces you to invent something unique, a piece of advice to you: always keep in mind that it is absolutely essential to know what the market wants before you go on inventing something. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way in the past.

To know what your market wants, you need to conduct a market survey. However, before you start, prepare a list of questions to ask your target market customers. Here are some examples to get you thinking:

• Will they buy your products? If so, how much will they pay?
• How would they improve the product?
• What are the problems that you face and want them solved immediately?

An experienced inventor once told me he would sit outside his grocery store and ask passers-by the above questions.

Another inventor told me he would approach people in the area of the store where his product would be found, and survey people. Here was his trick; he would tell them he was doing a survey for his friend’s invention so the person being surveyed was more likely to tell the truth (rather than avoid hurting the inventor’s feelings).

Try some of these techniques and develop your own process. The most important thing is that you have a process for surveying customers.

- Bryan Daigle
President & Founder of ideatango.com – the #1 site for inventors & invention ideas For more good info & advice, check out the official IdeaTango Blog

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