So, the information is vast. There are a ton of sites out there with a myriad of advice on where to begin and who to approach. A lot of it is great and useful, but there is a strange balancing act of knowing what applies at each stage and how to proceed through each stage whilst ensuring you are keeping your idea protected.

Throughout this entire process, my priority is to protect the idea as best I can. There are more and more makers and inventors stating that patents are both a good and bad idea here in the UK, or that design protection is better, so how do you know which one to choose?
The simple answer is you don’t.

Before you make your idea public for investment by a company or through a crowd funding source, you’ll want to safeguard it in some way and some methods are more expensive than others, offer varying levels of safety. My initial thought was to get a patent.

I didn’t want to just rush in and file a patent without considering my options. I had heard that there were product design companies who will help in developing your idea and then in turn could advise and file a suitable protection for an idea. Sounds great, and to some extent it is if you have a reasonably good budget.

I contacted a company called Innovate Design (https://www.innovate-design.co.uk/) who will happily give you a free initial meeting with a signed NDA, that they supply, where they will assess your idea and give some preliminary feedback on where to take the idea next. I have to say that Innovate were superb. The meeting was very productive and highlighted some items to address, but they also confirmed that I had presented a very well-constructed product. I didn’t just walk in there and throw a lump of 3D printed plastic on the table. I had spent some time drafting my own text for patent wording, with questions around manufacturing and future uses, along with photos of the idea being used and several 3D renders. I should point out at this stage that my wife (https://alextwin.co.uk/) has been an excellent sounding board to discuss this project with and she is responsible for elaborating on the future of it.
Another thing to point is that there are a number of cowboys out there. I have read a few stories about designs being stolen because inventors haven’t done their homework. Innovate Design seemed to check out both in terms of their accreditation’s and the information contained in their free information pack. Don’t divulge any information unless you’re certain it is secure and being handled by professionals, and don’t be afraid to only give partial details if you’re unsure.

The result of my assessment meeting was to conduct an international patent search at the cost of £500. Beyond being an actual product already in the shops, if there’s already a patent out there, then the idea is considered public domain and you cannot stake your claim as it is no longer unique, so you need to do this check.
You can conduct the search yourself for free (https://worldwide.espacenet.com/), but good luck in sifting through the results. Innovate specialise in these searches and the information that was returned to me a month later was incredible. 101 patents that were in the same ball park as my invention. They had also made a summary detailing those that were most closely aligned to my product, and after much reading and sorting through the in-depth report I concluded that there were only two that concerned me.
Innovate were happy to discuss these in detail over the phone and to discuss what I should do next. It turns out that my ideas were/are sufficiently different to become an entirely new intellectual property (IP).

Initially I had thought that I would be placing all of my eggs in the Innovate Design basket and getting them to process the patent for me at a rough cost of £2,000, but what I didn’t realise was that there was a non-negotiable design process that had to proceed the patent submission where a cost of £2,880 was requested to produce 3-4 A3 sheets detailing my invention for me to present to potential manufacturers or licensers. This was in addition to the £2,000 patent processing costs which, in addition to the £500 spent, meant a further outlay of nearly £5k. THAT’S FIVE THOUSAND POUNDS! Crikey.

As I have a background in design it didn’t seem sensible for me to proceed to pay out this kind of money when I am capable of researching and creating the corresponding presentation materials. Had Innovate come back and said that the design process, which appears to be specific to them, could be waived or reduced in cost due to materials already supplied, then perhaps I would already have a patent pending today. It makes total sense for the majority of applications where not everyone has a grounding in design or in developing their product marketing materials. I suppose it also serves as a way to explore the idea and determine the exact wording required for the patent so there is some justification for needing this step, just not for me.
I’m still highly impressed with the research they have conducted on my behalf and the information within the report listing the discovered patents has been invaluable to me. I just simply haven’t got that kind of money floating about and I’m not currently prepared to get a loan to cover it.

More about patents in my next post.