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In This Issue

Featured Article

Patent Filing Services

Sizing Your Market

Information for Marketers

October 15 Seminar

The Rochester Professional Consultants Network [RPCN] Has invited us to speak at their fall meeting. The topic will be "Expanding your Practice in New Areas" (when you cant do it all alone anymore). Watch this space for advance copies and trailers.

Technical Difficulties

Our New website had recently gone live. However we are now experiencing technical difficulties so its possible you may see the old site instead when you go to www.bmllc.net If you see the new site tell us what you think. We much appreciate your comments on improving our site to serve you better.

Youtube Channel

Checkout the latest postings to our new YouTube Channel. You can find videos on many of the topics covered in the newsletters.

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Newsletter - July 2014

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Patent Filing Services

Most inventors when they consider filing a patent application consult a patent attorney or agent. But not all do it that way. Often to save money an inventor will try to file a patent application himself or herself. This can be a daunting task but it can be assisted by the use of patent filing services.

Some of these services are less than scrupulous but others can be quite useful to the inventor as long as he/she understands what service he is getting for his money.

Many of these services will file a provisional patent application for the inventor. Since provisional patents are not examined by the patent office any document can be filed and the value of it will only be known if the inventor decides to turn the provisional application into a non-provisional application.

Using a filing service for a non-provisional patent means that the inventor needs to be able to write patent claims. Writing patent claims is a high art. I've had a patent attorney tell me that it takes 7 years before an attorney can write high quality patent claims.

So if you have a provisional patent and you need to convert it you might want to consult an attorney to write the claims. Or if you insist on writing your own claims you might ask the attorney to review them.

As a test I checked out Legal Zoom which is one of the premier filing services. They will file a provisional application for only $199, but their non-provisional utility patent application ,which uses patent agents, is priced similarly to what local patent agents charge.

The thing to watch out for is companies that offer to file a non-provisional patent for a very low price and actually only file a provisional application if they file anything at all.

At BML we can help you draft a provisional application although we cannot supply the text. We tell you what to talk about and edit the text that you write. Ask us about our Invention Reports.

The goal of a good provisional application is to contain all the material that would go in the body of the non-provisional application. Patent attorneys and agents often charge half the price of the full non-provisional application when drafting a provisional. They will then charge the other half when completing the application and additional charges in patent prosecution.

So if you are thinking about writing your own patent application give us a call before you engage a filing service.. We may be able to help.

To learn more please email rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com

or give us a call at (585) 520-3539

Business Sale vs Patent Sale

At ITTr we broker the sale of patents. There is a lot of similarity in selling patents and selling a business, but there are some very important and significant differences as well.

Some of our clients are so far along in the development of their products that the patent sale might be considered a business sale. Others of our clients ran a business focused on their intellectual property that is no longer profitable and they wish to sell their IP as part of liquidating the assets of their business.

The most important difference between selling a business and a patent is that a patent exists to protect future business of a company owing to the product described in the patent. An existing business is already making money from selling a product which may (or may not) be patented. The big difference then is that a business has cash flow. A patent, by itself, although it might generate cash flow in the future (for example from royalty sales) produces no cash flow in the present.

In a business much of the startup costs have already been paid. A market has been defined and a customer has been found. This is not true of a patent. For that reason a business is usually worth much more than the intellectual property upon which it may be founded.

There is a paradox in patent valuation. The more novel an invention is the higher its potential worth but also the higher the risk in getting it to market. Thus its is often very difficult to sell really novel inventions in the early stages of development.

There are of course exceptions. Sometimes a really novel invention is recognized by a community of interest and then there may be several potential buyers and a bidding war will drive up the price. The overnight millionaires you read about in the press are, unfortunately, rare indeed.

What we find is that the closer a patented idea is to being a business the easier it is to sell and the more we can get for it.

That is the reason we have introduced the ROTH scoring table which is a measure of the maturity of an invention.

Fill in a ROTH and we will tell you where your invention falls on a scale of 0-100 with 0 being an idea in your head and 100 a product in the marketplace making money. ROTH scores are free and will tell you not only how mature your invention is but where it is weak and needs work. Often it will also indicate possible problems such as when you attack a small market but indicate the cost to bring your invention to market is large.

To find out more contact us at the address below or learn more from the website.

write to rblazey@ittrifecta.com or call (585) 520-3539

Finding Information for Marketers

Penguin is an information services business. Finding information is easy. The world is awash in it. All one need is contact the "Great God Google" and you can get an answer to any question you ask. But will it be the right answer?

Penguin's customers are marketers. Whatever they are doing their goal is to find information about customers. Sometimes that information is readily available and sometimes it is not. It is an old saying that "knowledge is power". And those who have key knowledge often guard it very carefully.

The value of knowledge is also time dependent. Knowing yesterday's stock prices, today is of zero value. Knowing tomorrow's stock prices today can be worth a fortune.

For that reason its important to study the markets that you plan to enter. Most people know that but few actually do it well. You can and should start with a Google search, but that can only take you so far.

You should start with Peter Drucker's question -- "Who is my customer". That is what are the demographics, location, motivation etc of those who will eventually buy my product. Not only are they interested enough to buy but can they afford the price I plan to ask.

Next subdivide your market by Demographics. Tools like InfoUSA can be a big help here. You can also prepare questionnaires and run them on the Internet using tools like Survey Monkey.

After you have used up all the easily accessible tools on the Internet you will probably still need more information. Particularly refined information and information that is not easily accessible such as on Privately held companies. That is the time to contact Penguin. You will know what information you need and you will have got as much of it as you can using free services. We can help you find the rest.

If after seeing it you want to learn more please contact us.

You can email me at : rblazey@rochester.rr.com, Call at (585) 520-3539. Or visit our website by clicking on this link

We appreciate your responses to our newsletters. Please send us your comments. We are always interested in what you want to know.

Sincerely,

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC

Disclaimers

Please realize that this newsletter contains only our opinions on patent matters. We are not authorized to give legal advice. If you are seeking such advice please contact an attorney.

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