Angela

[Angela]

You’re all right. One thing I should add is that you also have to be aware of what isn’t a scam. Usually your gut feeling helps but you have to make sure what it tells you is in fact correct. It takes time and effort to find out which companies/people are scammers and which aren’t.

[Angela]

1. You have to make sure that your idea something new.
2. You need to secure your intellectual property rights and make your idea semi-protected. Unless you have embodied the implementation in hardware or code, you have a concept which may or may not be fully protectable.
3. A lot of companies will refuse to sign an NDA to limit the possibility of future litigation should they “infringe” your idea. Having a good intellectual property attorney is a good idea.
4. Adjust your expectations. Not all ideas are worth a million dollars and many do not live up to their creators’ expectations all the time.
5. If business is impossible around this single idea, you may need to settle for selling or leasing the intellectual property rights with yourself attached as a developer/demonstrator under the terms and conditions of sale.
6. You may wish to create a business plan around the idea, but this is a speculative venture and may actually limit your personal involvement if the company feels that they do not need the additional cost burden of another employee to implement the idea.
7. Approach companies with a need for your idea — and maybe a company in an unaffiliated industry where the entire concept of the platform and idea will seem appealing.

[Angela]

As I said on the other thread, you’d want to ask them the following questions:
– what exactly will the $4,500 get you?
– ask for a list of things they will do for that money.
– is there a refund if they aren’t able to license your idea?
– how many products have they tried to license and how many have they actually licensed?

My guess is that less than 1% of all their projects ever get licensed so they make most of their money by charging people like they’re trying to charge you. Maybe they don’t even try too hard to get anything licensed.

[Angela]

You should definitely ask them the following questions:
– what exactly will the $4,500 get you?
– ask for a list of things they will do for that money.
– is there a refund if they aren’t able to license your idea?
– how many products have they tried to license and how many have they actually licensed?

My guess is that less than 1% of all their projects ever get licensed so they make most of their money by charging people like they’re trying to charge you. Maybe they don’t even try too hard to get anything licensed.

[Angela]

Hi Mike,

You don’t need to have your patent before you start pitching your idea to a company. What you need is to apply for a patent first to try and maintain some level of control or protection on your idea, and only then try to pitch or sell your idea to the company to see if they would be willing to buy or license your patent application from you.

Also, be very careful about working with any company that wants to charge you money to help you sell or license your invention. Many of these companies are scams and even the ones that are legit have a very low success rate and make most of their money from inventors like you paying them.

[Author]

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