Indiana Inventors Association

What inventor doesn’t want to make money on his invention?   No one we know.   Dave Zedonis (president, Indiana Inventors Association; principal, Z*Tech ) offered some suggestions on how to make money. • Know your innovation space. Find out what people want to buy, not just what you want to sell (ie, don’t fall helplessly in love with your invention). Find out if someone else has already invented your invention by searching for it in patents, patent applications, catalogs, advertisements, and on the internet. • Your primary objective should be to license your invention. This is easier than starting your own business and involves less risk. • Create a budget and a plan for licensing your invention. Learn as you go.   Be willing to learn, adapt, and refine your plan at every step. Spend money on important steps as you can afford them and avoid scope creep by watching your expenses. Have an exit strategy.   Not every invention can be successful in ...

Patent attorney and Indiana Super Lawyer ®   Charles Meyer kindly treated us to an update of his 2019 presentation on intellectual property: patents, trademarks, and copyrights. It’s not unusual for 60-80% of a company’s property to be intangible.   So if you are starting a business, take the advice of Shark Tank : create a business plan and protect the company’s intellectual property.   Patents If you want a patent, the most important thing to remember is: file a patent application within one year of the date your invention is first disclosed to the public .   If you wait any longer, you cannot get a patent for that invention. The two most prevalent kinds of patents are utility patents (for new, nonobvious, and useful things or methods) and design patents (for the ornamentation of manufactured things; ex. Coca Cola bottle design).   Patents for biological plants are also available. There are two routes to getting a utility patent.   An...

Inventors want to maximize profits from selling their products.   An excellent way to do this is to optimize their supply chain. A supply chain is the entire process of producing and delivering a product.   This includes obtaining raw materials, making and packaging the product, storing the product, and delivering the product to vendors and to the customer.   Logistics (making sure the right things [goods, materials, information] get to the right place at the right time) is one important link in the supply chain. Local inventor Kenton Brett told us about the benefits of attending a trade show and, in particular, what he learned about recent innovations in robotic logistics (the use of automated machines to manage a warehouse, fulfill orders, and handle materials) at the ProMat 2025 trade show in Chicago. In general, attending a good trade show is condensed learning.   An inventor working with technology displayed at the show can get new ideas and validate or ...

  One of the many joys of inventing is finding a fun new tool that helps you with your work.   Local inventor Matt Thie told us about his latest favorite – a now-affordable (~$5K) fiber laser welder that he bought on eBay. Mr. Thie bought the laser to help him clean some old car parts.   Laser ablation focused a beam of light (1064 nm wavelength) on rust to rapidly heat, vaporize, and push the rust from the underlying steel.   In just a few minutes his car parts looked new with little or no damage to the steel.   Compare that to the time and mess involved in removing rust with chemicals, grinding, or sandblasting. Mr. Thie told us about other uses for this laser .   It works on a variety of materials, including brick, metal (aluminum, copper, iron, nickel alloys, steel [carbon, galvanized, or stainless]), paper, plastic, and wood.   It removes not only rust, but also other oxides, paint, oil, ink, and grease and strips varnish from wood cabinets...

SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) offers innovators a wealth of useful information and advice: mentors (specialized or general, local or from across the country, in-person or remote), events (live or recorded; in-person or online), courses (live or recorded), and business document templates.   Dave Zedonis (president, Indiana Inventors Association) shared one of SCORE’S webinars with us: IP Types and Infringement by patent attorney Michael Steel. Success of a business often depends on its tangible ideas: inventions, symbols that communicate the company to its customers, and creative expressions.   Naturally, business owners want to protect this competitive edge.   So they enlist the help of the government by getting patents, trademarks, and copyrights, which are enforced by court systems. Patents Patents are available for useful things (utility patents), for ornamentation (design patents [important for 3-D printing]), and for biological plants (plan...

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 intelligenc...

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 ...

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.   ...

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 exhibit...

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 m...

          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, ...

Want to build a prototype of your invention?   Has Machyne got the place for you! Alex Bandar, PhD (executive director, Machyne) believes that everyone has the potential to be an educated and empowered innovator.   If you can imagine something, you can learn how to, and actually, sketch it digitally in 2 or 3 dimensions for free.   YouTube shows you how.  Give that sketch to computer-run machines and they will create a prototype of the thing for you. If you need money for materials or for access to tools, run a crowdfunding campaign.   Show your prototype to a customer, investor, company, or retailer and ask if they will use your idea.   If they say yes, a global network of manufacturers, distributors, and retailers can spread your idea to markets worldwide. Alex embodied his belief by creating a clubhouse for makers, first in Columbus, OH ( Idea Foundry ) and now in Indianapolis.   Machyne makes it easy to move an idea from your head into your ...

Business is about relationships.   Benjamin Harrison (product developer; creator, SmartPitch ; author, Licensing Ideas Using LinkedIn ) told us how to use LinkedIn to approach decision makers and persuade them to join our teams. LinkedIn is playing a bigger role for inventors.   Many trade shows have been canceled or have become virtual.   Many people won’t answer a phone call from an unknown caller.   Thousands of companies are looking for inventions but must be approached professionally. The goal of using LinkedIn is to send direct and courteous messages seeking common ground to specific people.   Then, if common ground exists, move the conversation off of LinkedIn.   There is no need to create content about your invention or to be an influencer in order to get at least a 25% response rate from decision makers. Build a community of people with compatible interests because you never know who might help you.   Start by creating a professional...

This is a brand new day, ladies and gentlemen.   A brand new day. — Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit   Sell first and sell fast.   Speed is the key to profiting from a simple, short-lived invention.   To increase our chances of quickly licensing our inventions, Stephen Key (inventor, author, speaker, and co‑founder of inventRight, LLC) recommends that we develop and use four selling tools: the point of difference ; perceived ownership; a LinkedIn profile; and a list of companies that love open innovation . The point of difference tells a potential licensee how your invention differs from marketed products and from prior art .   This gives a potential licensee two things: confidence that your invention has unique benefits that customers might want to buy; and the perception that you could own a place in the market for your invention (ie, get a patent).   A search for your invention on Google and in stores will show the difference between your inv...