Grip Glass

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THE ONLINE INVENTOR – March 2011 issue

http://www.marketlaunchers.com

Editor: Paul Niemann

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Dear Inventor:

Before we get to this week’s article, we start with 3 short messages:

1. Congratulations to customer Greg Edwards on the licensing deal he signed with Lambert & Lambert. Greg is another happy MarketLaunchers customer, and you will see his Vinyl Edger handheld cutter in hardware stores later this year. I made a personal introduction for Greg to Trevor Lambert to help him get started, and they did the rest of the work. You can see what the Vinyl Edger looks like and what it does by visiting Greg’s MarketLaunchers web page at: www.marketlaunchers.com/edwards.html
Lambert & Lambert’s web site is www.lambertinvent.com

2. If you’re a subscriber to Inventors’ Digest, then you may have noticed my column in the March issue. Beginning with the next issue in May, I am regular contributor to the magazine again. I also wrote for them from 2001 – 2004. Lots of great info there.

3. One last thing … Remember, the “$1 down deal” promotion is still going on. This is the one where you can get your own invention web site for only $1 down on MarketLaunchers.com
You can get the details at http://www.marketlaunchers.com/$1downdeal.html

Read on, and enjoy this issue.

CLEVER QUOTES OF THE WEEK ...

“The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts”
– Author Unknown (sent to me by Norm Krastel, subscriber to this newsletter. Thanks, Norm)

“The heaviest thing you can carry is a grudge.

Ideas won't work unless ‘You' do.
One thing you can give and still keep....is your word.

The 10 commandments are not a multiple choice.

The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a lifetime!
It is never too late to become what you might have been.”
– Author Unknown (also sent to me by Norm Krastel, subscriber to this newsletter. Thanks, Norm)

“Pura Vida!”
– popular saying in Costa Rica . It means “Pure life!”

Best Regards,
Paul Niemann
Paul Niemann
www.MarketLaunchers.com
(800) 337-5758

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Article # 1: Evaluating Invention Submitters and Marketing Agents
By Jack Lander of www.Inventor-mentor.com

Many of our clients (and clients to-be) who have patents ask us about the invention submission or invention help services that claim they will either submit your invention to manufacturers, or develop it for you so that it can then be submitted. In general, these firms are ineffective. Few of them are outright scams; they do what their fine-print claims they’ll do. This concession is because some of the officers of the scammers have gone to prison in the past. But do they provide you with valuable services, and earn their high prices? The answer is almost certainly no.

Many inventors are also worried that their ideas or inventions will be stolen. These fellows aren’t interested in stealing anyone’s invention. That means they’d have to work to make money, and it’s much, much easier to take the uninformed inventor’s money without the hard work of producing and marketing.

The invention submitters and developers make an enormous amount of money by turning out carbon-copy boilerplate, and often inadequate prototypes and worthless patents. They become enormously wealthy because what they do is virtually risk free, and pays them outrageous fees upfront. Taking on actually developing an invention, and then submitting it to industry, has a poor record of producing profit. In short, it demands work and risk, something that repels the “sharks.” (I don’t mean to sound too discouraging at this point. Properly coached by an ethical service, your chances of success are greatly improved.)

To be fair, there are a few developers who, if they accept your invention, will actually develop it and take it to market without your having to invest money up front. Unlike the heavily advertised submitters and developers, the ethical persons or firms accept very few inventions that cross their desks. My estimate is that it’s less than 5 percent. (Evergreen IP, one of the ethical developers, stated in a recent e-mail that they had accepted only 12 of about 1500 inventions proposed to them. That’s just a bit less than 1 percent, about the same as the success rate of the submitters who charge outrageous fees.) .

What about invention marketing agents?

(continued after the break)

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(continued from above)

What about invention marketing agents?

Shouldn’t an agent work strictly on commission, like a real-estate agent? Theoretically, yes. And the best agents do. They don’t charge you anything for their efforts except perhaps travel expenses if they have to visit a long-distance potential licensee. However, expect an effective agent to want from 30 to 50 per-cent of whatever income you might collect from your licensee in royalties, or a lump-sum buyout.

Is 50 percent outrageous? Not in our opinion. There often is a long, dry period between the time they take on an invention and when the first payment is received. Meanwhile, they have living and business expenses. And licensing is a risky business; many inventions don’t get licensed in spite of their best efforts.

How does an inventor tell the difference between the sharks and the good guys? Here are two questions that you should ask of any invention submitter, developer, helper, or marketing agent:

1. Out of 100 inventions submitted to you, how many do you accept and work on? The answer should be no more than 20 percent — ideally, less than 10 percent. Any person or firm accepting more than 20 percent of the proposed ideas or inventions, in our opinion, is either unethical or deluded. To work on an invention that obviously does not merit the work, is to take an inventor’s money under false pretense, or, in the case of an invention marketing agent, is giving false encouragement to the inventor. And the agents who take on more than a few percent put the less promising inventions on a back burner, and work on those that look most promising.

2. Will you give me the names of three clients whose inventions have earned more than they paid you? Answers such as “Our client list is confidential.” or “Our offices are scattered all over the country. We just don’t get this kind of feedback.” are typical, and are utter nonsense. Any person or firm that succeeds on behalf of his or her clients finds that 90 percent of those clients are happy to have their names used. We speak from experience. Check our web site for our client’s words, photos, names, and towns. www.KarlaAndJack.com

If you are still tempted to use an invention submitter or helper, have an attorney check their fine print very carefully before you sign anything. And always ask their full cost. Typically, this is from $12,000 to $15,000.

Effective agents who don’t charge up-front fees are hard to find, but we list a few in our “golden Rolodex.” (We are mentors, not marketing agents.) See our web site for upcoming seminars.

Until next time . . .

Best wishes, Jack Lander www.Inventor-Mentor.com

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Jack Lander is a mentor to inventors, as well as a seasoned inventor with 13 patents and always working on more. His most commercially successful patents are assigned to U.S. Surgical Corporation. Jack served as President of the United Inventors Association and is presently the Vice President of the Yankee Invention Exposition. He has been a feature columnist in Inventors' Digest magazine for the past 14 years writing the "Lander Zone." He is a published author of "How to Finance Your Invention or Great Idea," "All I Need Is Money," and more than 50 special reports for inventors. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience to guide you, and his newest book is entitled: Marketing Your Invention: a complete guide to licensing, and to marketing and selling your invention. His web site is www.inventor-mentor.com

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Article # 2: All about stereolithography and plastic injection molding
By Jack Lander of www.Inventor-mentor.com

When Sara Blakely invented the outrageously successful Spanx^®, she started by cutting the lower legs and feet out of her pantyhose. Once she had worked out additional features, she went to a seamstress to create the second proof-of-concept version.

The inventor of De-Fuzz It – a product that has been successfully sold for years – noticed that when he leaned against a brick wall, the fuzz on his sweater came off, leaving his sweater looking like new. He spread glue and sprinkled aluminum oxide crystals on a piece of scrap fabric, and stapled it to a piece of wood. His crude prototype recreated the effect of the brick wall, and the rest is history.

The point is that a first prototype, even though relatively crude, can be very informative. Second generation prototypes get us closer to the goal of the looks-like/works-like (the final product) goal.

Now, let’s move on to a more functional prototype. Most long-lasting products are made from plastic, steel, aluminum, or zinc-alloy. (As we suggested last issue, hire an industrial designer if you are completely baffled by how, and of what material, your eventual product will be made. It’s important that your final prototype closely resemble the product it represents if possible.) Since each of the materials has its own special way of prototyping, we’ll deal with them individually. We’ll start with plastics.

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The vast majority of plastic products are produced by injection molding. An injection molding machine, essentially, is a big squirt gun. Plastic pellets are heated until melted, and the molten plastic is injected into a mold, where it cools and “freezes” back to a solid. When sufficiently cooled, the mold is opened, and the part or parts are ejected. The time required to close the mold, inject the plastic, cool it, open the mold, and eject the part is referred to a “cycle time.”

Molds may have more than one cavity, which is the chamber that forms the part. A four-cavity mold, for example, will make four parts in one cycle.

To faithfully prototype a part that will eventually be injection molded, we can use one of two basic processes: machine the part from solid plastic or “build” the part, layer by layer, with a process that goes by the exotic name of stereolithography, abbreviated “SLA” for some strange reason. Here’s how it works: First, you need a solid-model (also known as a “3-D”) drawing made by CAD (computer aided design). Draftspersons are found under “Draftsmen” in the yellow pages, or on the Internet by entering “CAD draftsman” plus your state.

The objective of your CAD solid model drawing is to obtain a printed drawing and a digital file that can be used to drive the automated SLA machinery. The file can be transmitted via e-mail, or retrieved on a CD, and sent to the SLA service provider found on www.jobshop.com, in your yellow pages, or on the Internet under “Stereolithography,” plus your area.

The SLA vendor will modify your file so that it will “slice” your drawing into hundreds of layers about the thickness of two human hairs. This slicing is strictly digital manipulation, not something you can see, or will reproduce as a drawing.

The SLA machine will be driven by the modified file. The machine consists of a vat of liquid plastic that is hardened by an ultraviolet laser beam, layer by layer until your complete three-dimensional model is constructed. The model, or prototype, will look exactly like your solid model as drawn.

Machining from solid plastic can also be driven by the CAD file using a five-axis milling machine found in many machine shops. The choice between SLA and machining is based mainly on cost. The more complex the part, the more likely you’ll find SLA to be the less expensive of the two options.

The SLA process can produce your parts from several kinds of plastic – some delicate, and some tough. Expect the cost to be around $100 to $200 non-recurring to modify your CAD file, and from $100 to $500 to make the part. If you need to produce a number of parts – let’s say 50 – you should consider making a silicone rubber mold using your first SLA prototype as a “master” pattern. You can then cast a variety of plastics ranging from soft rubber to clear, acrylic-like hard plastic.

A few other processes that are similar to SLA will be found at many SLA vendors. These variations of the SLA theme may be less expensive than SLA , and create acceptable parts. Ask about options.

Until next time . . .

Best wishes, Jack Lander www.Inventor-Mentor.com

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Article # 3: E-mail, phone call, or meet face-to-face meeting:
Which works best when contacting prospective licensees?
By Paul Niemann of www.MarketLaunchers.com

This might seem like a pretty obvious question; after all, it’s always best to meet face-to-face, right?

Well, sure, but sometimes it is not economical to travel halfway across the country to meet someone. You have other options, and we’ll rank them and list the benefits of each one in this article.

E-MAIL:

While e-mail is the easiest, least expensive and quickest method of communication, it is also the easiest for the person on the other end to ignore and delete.

PHONE:

The phone is the second best method of the three, but it has its drawbacks, too, as you have probably found out if you have called any companies. Most executives and business owners have voice mail.; my estimate is that 80 % of phone calls to executives and business owners result in getting their voice mail message.

FACE-TO-FACE MEETING:

The best method of the three is to meet face-to-face whenever possible. People like to do business with people who they know and trust. Meeting someone in person allows you to establish trust and show the benefits of your invention to him or her. Plus, it is much easier to communicate back and forth when you can see the other person’s non-verbal messages, such as his facial expressions.

When you do choose e-mail (and regular mail), you should address the person by name, instead of “To Whom It May Concern.” Generic messages are more likely to be trashed than those with a name on them. Plus, it shows more professionalism on your part.

When I worked for an ad agency in St. Louis back in the early 1990’s, we used mail and the phone as a combination …

(find out what happened after the break)

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”This week I worked with an inventor who is also in business.   He has a
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filed. This patent bar is triggered even if by commercializing the
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(continued from above)

When I worked for an ad agency in St. Louis back in the early 1990’s, we used mail and the phone as a combination when we called on businesses. This was before the internet, and we would call each prospect on the phone, confirm his mailing address, and then ask if we can send him the informative information that we’ve compiled.

70% of them would say “Yes,” so we would send it to them AND then follow up with a phone call no more than a week later. By using the phone, we made sure that each prospect actually RECEIVED and READ our information, plus we could add the next step, which was to set up an appointment for a face-to-face meeting.

When you do that now, you can direct them to your website if they say they did not receive the information that you sent.

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Paul Niemann runs MarketLaunchers.com, where he builds web sites for inventors and small businesses. The main benefit of having your own web page is that you can show companies your invention’s web site when you’re not able to visit them in person. Plus, all customers get FREE COACHING from Paul. Visit www.marketlaunchers.com and find out how you can order your own invention web page for just $1 down. Paul Niemann can be reached at niemann7@aol.com or at (800) 337-5758.

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