Originally posted by Turion
View Post
Back in the late 40's and early 50's my father developed a hydraulicly driven mechanical machine to palletize packages. It was programmable through hydraulic valves to handle different sized packages and stacking patterns.
The investors that looked at it took his plans and started building and selling the machine. When he filed a patent infringement suit against them they used the profits from selling the machine to do just what you said - exhuast his resources. Patent trolls are not new.
All of the current automated warehousing systems of today from FedEx to the automotive industry are based off of that machine.
So it basically doesn't matter if you leave info out of the patent. Once the design is out in the wild, it's gone and you have no control over it.
BTW there are several countries that do not have a patent treaty with U.S. and/or Great Britain. China is one.
So unless you have the money to build and control the manufacturing process and hit the ground running, you'll never make a dimes profit from selling your product.
On the other hand, as long as the costs can be kept reasonable any device can be used for your personal use to help reduce your dependency on the grid and possibly get paid for feeding energy back into the grid.
The entire patent system only feeds new ideas into the companies that already have the money to develop those ideas into functional products. If you or your investors don't have the money to fight an IBM or GE or Microsoft or whoever, filing a patent application is just a waste of time and money. Keep in mind that a patent attorney costs $500 to $1000 an hour.
So forget about patents and get on with it.

Leave a comment: