I Finally Found the Perfect Product to Patent
I am always thinking of inventions or product designs that I would like to pursue through the patenting process. To be honest, I have probably had about 10 ideas in the past 20 years that I might have considered patent worthy. These ideas were projects or products that I considered patenting, but deep down I did not have enough confidence in them to actually complete the patent process.
After all, getting a patent is expensive – you have to hire a patent attorney and file with the US patent office, a process which can cost between $3,000 and $5,000. With my prior product ideas, spending that much money seemed like more of a risk than I cared to take. So I always wondered if I would ever find a product that I was so confident in that I would actually purchase a patent.
I found that product last week. I was sound asleep when my newborn son woke my wife and I up screaming for his pacifier. You see, when he moves at night he sometimes loses his pacifier and immediatley begins screaming. Since it was dark in the room, my wife and I were rustling through the sheets trying to locate the missing pacifier. While we were rummaging through the sheets, we were only aggrivating my son even more. Unable to locate the paci, we finally had to turn on the light and find it. Turning on the light completely annoyed my son even more and he broke out into a crying frenzy. This is not fun at 3:30 am.
This is when my wife said to me “This is ridiculous! You need to invent glow in the dark pacifiers!” In my sleepy daze I replied “Don’t they make those already?” and my wife said “No, I have never seen them at Baby’s-R-Us or Target” – I believed my wife, since we have two young children and she frequents both stores. So we finally calmed my son down and I laid there in bed thinking. I wanted to sleep but the idea of these glow in the dark pacifiers was stuck in my head. It was 4 am and within ten minutes I was wide awake. I was thinking that I had found the perfect product! After all, how many other parents have a hard time locating their child’s pacifier in the dark? My bet was that many parents had this very same problem – and I had the solution! (Well, actually my wife did!)
Unable to sleep, I went downstairs and fired up the computer to begin my research on glow in the dark pacifiers. I was prepared to hunker down and do some hard core research. I was seriously considering going to a patent attorney that day if I could not find glow in the dark pacifiers anywhere online. Groggily, I typed the search term into Google – “glow in the dark pac” — I got to the “c” in pacifier and Google slapped me in the face with cold hard reality. Google had filled in the rest of the term in the search engine results before I even finished typing. I knew I was in trouble!
Sure enough – there they were, all different brands and types of glow in the dark pacifiers – all available for sale. Right there, my perfect product patent idea was finished. But I did not feel so bad afterwards, because this meant that if I keep thinking of ideas I will eventually get it right. The glow in the dark pacifier stood for the fact that my idea was indeed a good one and it would have been worth patenting. So I was able to recognize a good idea when I had one. Now I just have to find one that isn’t already taken.
You can buy glow in the dark pacifiers here, unfortunately: Glow In The Dark Pacifiers
MJ
6 Comments to “I Finally Found the Perfect Product to Patent”
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Thanks for sharing your story, that was funny to think of you googling glow in the dark pacifiers in the middle of the night.
Here’s hoping your next idea is a winner and one nobody’s thought of yet!
Never stop thinking about new ideas. You are truly a “make money online” person with business on your mind 24/7!
-Kai Lo
Twitter @lomak1985
Thanks Kai! Yes, my wife tells me I need to relax and stop thinking about ways to make money! HaHa.
MJ
You must be kidding. I live in Brazil, and had the EXACT same experience trying to find the pacifier in the middle of the night, which gave me exactly the same idea. When I tried looking for patents for the product (I wasn’t even as direct as you were in the search), I stumbled upon your article from barely over a week ago. Goes to show that having a good, original, patenteable idea is really a hard proposition…
Hi Henrique! That is crazy! I am just curious, could you have gotten a US patent since (I assume) you are a Brazilian citizen? Or were you thinking of a Brazilian patent? Or maybe patents are recognized globally? (To be honest, I don’t know much about the limits of patents between countries!) I actually may have another idea – I am meeting with a patent attorney on Tuesday to get some info. I will keep you posted – but it may be a while.
MJ
Hi MJ!
Crazy indeed, what are the odds?
And yes, I’m a Brazilian citizen.
About the patent, that’s a good question, and answering it would have been one of my next steps if I hadn’t hit the massive wall of reality.
My wife is an attorney with some experience in the field here in Brazil, I’ll ask her to be sure, but from what I know, it’s possible to register a patent locally and have it recognized internationally due to international law and agreements.
Having lived in the US a few years and from what I know about the law and the culture in general, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some way that I could request a patent there, even as a foreigner. I haven’t quite thought this through, but my feeling is that there is probably something to be gained by having the patent registered locally, instead of letting some other country register it.
Very interesting blog, I’m adding your feed to my favorites!
Henrique