Indiana Inventors Association

No innovator is an island.   Successfully marketing an invention requires learning firsthand what people want, who those people are, and how to connect the two.   An easy and fast way to learn about those things is to attend trade shows and expos relevant to your invention.   Local inventor Kenton Brett told us about his recent experiences at the international Inspired Home Show in Chicago, IL and at the 3D Printing Expo 2024 in Carmel, IN. The annual 5-day Inspired Home Show is the largest housewares trade show in North America.   This year's attractions included keynote addresses, a hall of global innovation, an inventors' corner, a display of new products, and free food samples prepared by celebrity and award-winning chefs.   A lunchtime conversation with a stranger gave Mr. Brett insight into what his customers want. At the Carmel Clay Public Library, Jordan Goddard (owner, Indy Toy Lab ) gave a fascinating talk on the role of artificial intelligence and 3-dimensio

Randy Landreneau (president, US Inventor; president, Complete Product Development) and Dirk Tomsin (director of projects, US Inventor; co-owner, CrossFit Untapped) gave us reason to think that our patent system is too unstable for individual inventors. Inventing and marketing a product take effort, insight, money, and time.   Innovators want to be reimbursed or rewarded for their investment in helping others.   Our government knows that a thriving economy depends on inventions.   So to keep inventions coming, it rewards inventors with patents —legal protection from market competition for a limited time in exchange for sharing the invention with the public.   This protection consists of courts and a legal structure that are meant to help inventors repel competitors.   Innovators need this protection to be stable so they can estimate the costs, benefits, and risks of starting a new business.   Unfortunately patents are too often unstable. Molly Metz Consider Molly Metz .   She a

Inventors now have a new way to advertise their inventions.   Craig Whitcomb told us about his new creation, Remarkable Venture . Mr. Whitcomb recommends that an inventor build the value of his invention by moving through 11 steps .       1) Start by identifying a problem worth solving: relevant to the customers you want, solvable, and marketable.       2) Invent a rough draft of a solution to that problem, a proof of concept showing that a final solution is feasible.       3) Find out if someone else already marketed your solution.   Search sites, such as Amazon.com or the Internet Archive , for products similar to your solution/invention.       4) Find out if someone else already patented your invention.   Search sites, such as Patent Public Search or Free Patents Online , for claims that define inventions similar to yours.       5) Based on what your searches find, adapt and finalize your invention.       6) Create a working prototype of your

For an independent inventor, especially one new to an industry, there is no place better to learn and to network than a professional trade show (a large public display that promotes awareness and sales of new products within a particular industry).   Inventor Kenton Brett unpacked for us many of the benefits this tool offers. • Meet people who can help you. Engage with anyone who wants to interact with you.   Everyone there wants to do business and you never know who might be able to help you.   Someone who might become your friend, business partner, or client; who can answer your questions (now or later); who can connect you to the industry and make you feel like an insider; or who can give you a contract. There are no company gatekeepers at a trade show, so it is often easy to talk with a company’s leaders.   Scan the exhibitor directory to see who might share your interests (maybe the president or head of marketing of a company), note where their exhibits will be, and eith

Patent attorney Michael Morris treated us to an overview of four ways the law helps inventors to profit from their creations. First, a patent , which is an agreement.   The inventor receives a temporary monopoly that lets him prevent others from profiting from his invention.   This negative right helps the inventor protect his share of the market and defends him from from claims of violating the patent rights of other inventors.   In exchange, the inventor gives his inventive idea to the world when his temporary monopoly ends. A patent is granted to an inventor by a national (eg, United States ) or regional (eg, European ) patent office.   The U.S. grants three kinds of patents: utility (for a useful structure or a method of making or of using a useful structure); plant (for a botanical plant that the inventor invented or discovered and asexually reproduced, except a tuber or plant found in an uncultivated state); and design (for the ornamentation of something manufactured; protec

          The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. —Paul Val é ry We now have our own dream catcher .   It’s a book, Inventor Confidential: The Honest Guide to Profitable Inventing , that tells inventors how to keep the nightmare of empty promises from ruining their sweet dreams of financial success.   The author, Warren Tuttle (independent contractor for external open innovation, Lifetime Brands; past president, United Inventors Association of America), kindly summarized his book for us.   The first half of the book is about product development, the second half is about what interferes with financial success. There are two ways to bring an invention to the marketplace: indirectly (by licensing (ie, renting) or by selling the invention to others who bring it to the marketplace) or directly (by arranging for all of the steps yourself: production, tooling, landbridging, shipping, warehousing, fulfillment, sales teams, orders, collecting money, reinvesting money, e