The Independent Inventor's Handbook

Book excerpt: How do you actually turn a million-dollar idea into a million dollars? From scribble-on-the-napkin to product-on-the market, The Independent Inventor's Handbook explains everything a potential inventor needs to know and the tools he or she needs to use to take a raw concept and turn it into reality. Written by Louis J. Foreman, creator of the PBS series Everyday Edisons and a holder of multiple patents, together with patent attorney Jill Gilbert Welytok, here's a book that speaks directly to the inventive American—the entrepreneur, the tinkerer, the dreamer, the basement scientist, the stay-at-home mom who figures out how to do it better. (over one million of them file patents each year.) Here is everything a future inventor needs: Understanding the difference between a good idea and a marketable idea. Why investing too much money at the outset can sink you. The downside of design patents, and how best to file an application for a utility patent. Surveys, online test runs, and other strategies for market research on a tight budget. Plus the effective pitch (hint: never say your target audience is "everyone"), questions to ask a prospective manufacturer, 14 licensing land mines to avoid, "looks-like" versus "works-like" prototypes, Ten Things Not to Tell a Venture Capitalist, and how to protect your invention once it's on the market. Appendices include a glossary of legal, manufacturing, and marketing terms, a sample nondisclosure agreement, and a patent application, deconstructed.