shop4patents Blog

“I thought I would write to tell you a little about the Invent Now Challenge and my experiences in New York City where my DC-AC Soft-Switching Inverter was presented to a final judging panel. The sponsors and administrators for the contest were superb in the way they treated all the semifinalists. I recommend the 2008 Invent Now Challenge to all inventors because it is a fine way not only to show your own invention, but to also meet other inventors and see their enthusiasm and professionalism. (more…)

We’re a nation of inventors in garages and corporate labs, creating new gadgets and services that delight us and occasionally drive us crazy.
USA TODAY chose inventions that changed our lives since 1982.

1Cellphones
Car phones were around in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until 1983 that Motorola introduced the first widely available handheld cellphone. The DynaTAC 8000x weighed almost 2 pounds, but it still cost $3,995.

To see the other 24 inventions click….: (more…)

Question: My company owns the rights to a product that has a US patent and trademark.
I am currently receiving some interest from overseas buyers, but the product is not internationally
protected. The inventor did not register the patent internationally and the patent is a few years old. I am
considering filing a trademark application under the Madrid protocol but wondered if there is anyway to protect the product from being copied overseas. Are there such things as international trade agreements or non-disclosures that would prevent foreign parties from copying the formula and packaging?

Answer: Hello Rob, This is Steve replying.
Only if we could see into the future…. We would know whether to
invest in patenting inventions overseas or not. What I recommend to my clients is that they file for an International Patent Application via the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) after filing for their patent applications in the United States. (more…)

Getting Your Idea Into the MarketplaceCopyright 2007. SunZag Creative Products. All rights reserved. Re-printed with permission from the author.
So, you are an inventor with an idea, perhaps with a prototype or two. How exactly do you go about getting your idea into the marketplace and start making money from it? There are many paths to take, and many books have been written that cover topics such as licensing your invention to a big company, or self-venturing it as an entrepreneur. Only you can decide the correct path to take. You should listen to some advice of others, but in the end, the decision is yours - after all, nobody should know your invention (and its potential market) better than you do. (more…)