In our lives, we all have bouts of creativity and ‘Eureka!’ moments where we believe we have ‘cracked’ it. We have found the solution. Innovations like this, though, will simply not appear out of thin air. You have to build it – and you have to make sure that you patent your idea. If you do not, during creation nothing is stopping another person from making the same innovation and beating you to the punch.
Thankfully, it is pretty easy to get a patent for your idea so that others cannot do the same thing as you do. The US Patent & Trademark Office currently gets at least five times the number of patent requests it did in the 1980s. If you have a quality idea and you want to get some time to make it without someone else stealing your grand plan, then you need to apply.
Don’t live in the USA? You should be able to patent your idea in your own country. You just need to find out what office/branch you contact to do that. For US citizens, though, it is the US Patent & Trademark Office.
If your patent gets rejected, you can make adjustments and then reapply. If your patent is too similar to something else already patented or is unrealistic, it will not be passed. You can though keep on applying – you simply need to change an aspect of your application and try again. For the best chance of success, you should listen to why your patent was rejected so that you can try and make amendments that work.
You can, though, find that you need to pay for your patent – and it can cost you as much as $300. So, make sure you are not just trying to reapply without making any meaningful changes. You could spend thousands on failed patent applications simply because you will not listen to the reasons for rejection.
However, if you are going to try and push for that patent, you might hire a lawyer. If you do, you can look forward to paying well more than $10,000 for your fees and support. This does increase your likelihood of success, but if your patent is unpatentable then it is not going to be passed whether you have a lawyer on your side or not.