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 Newsletter - March  2015
 
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Kramer's Crazy Inventions


 

I have always been a big fan of the TV show "Seinfeld".  One of the most interesting characters on the show,  from the point of view of inventions, is Cosmo Kramer.  Cosmo was always coming up with "nutty" inventions (at least his friends thought they were nutty).  I decided to do a little research and found out that many of the "nutty inventions"  Cosmo created are now reality.

 

I also realized that you can learn a lot about patents from exploring the Kramer inventions.  So here's a little tour of his ideas and what became of them.  Of the four inventions I list below, three  are now reality.

  • A pizza parlor where you make your own pie.

Unos, which is a well known pizza restaurant will let you make your own pie, just as Cosmo envisioned.  There are several other chains that will do so as well.  From a patent point of view, this concept is a business service.  It might or might not have been patentable when Cosmo came up with the idea.  Services are often not patentable but in the 1990's the patent office changed the rules and allowed business process patents.  One of the first business process to be patented was Ebay.  Often these patents were really a business idea captured in software.


 Whether Cosmo's make it yourself pizza would fall into that category is an open question.  Comments welcome on whether it should be or not.

  • A perfume that smells like the beach

This invention relates to one of my favorite episodes where Kramer discloses the idea of a "perfume that smells like the beach"  to an executive at Calvin Klein.  The executive laughs him out of the office  and one year later Calvin Klein is marketing Kramer's perfume.


 

Kramer was certainly foolish in sharing this idea with Calvin Klein without either a patent or a non-disclosure agreement to protect his interests, but in any case its not clear he could have gotten a patent.  In order to do so Kramer would have to have shown how someone "skilled in the art"  could make the perfume he envisioned.  If he had partnered with a cosmetics chemist who could make the perfume then he might have been able to get a patent.


 

A quick look finds lots of perfumes that make you smell like the beach.  Here's one called "beach in a bottle".  Not sure if Calvin Klein offers one.

  • A coffee table book about coffee tables
Kramer's nutty idea for this book got him a guest appearance on Regis and Kathy Lee.  His coffee table book even had fold out feet.  Well this book exist also.  You can buy it on Amazon.  I'm not sure if it has feet like Kramers.  Books are usually not something you can patent.  You use copyright to protect a book.  However in using  fold-out feet Kramer might have gone beyond the idea of something that was solely a book.  He could probably not have obtained a utility patent on this idea but he might have got a design patent.
  • A rollout tie dispenser
So far the only references I can find to this idea was to the Seinfeld episode itself.  Apparently no one has decided that its  worth inventing a tie dispenser to bring forth a new tie when you get mustard on the one you are wearing.  However, even this crazy idea can teach us something.  

In this case, if someone actually tried to patent a rollout tie dispenser as Kramer describes,  the TV show would be prior art cited against him.  So the rollout tie dispenser is now public domain and anyone who wants to make it can do so without worrying that someone will sue for patent infringement.  Interestingly, I'm sure that all Seinfeld episodes are copyrighted but I doubt a copyright could be used to prevent someone from making this device.  Anyone have thoughts on this?


 To learn more about how to get the full value out of your patents please contact us. Just call or email.

 

email  rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com 

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

 


Setting an Asking Price

Clients often ask ITTr what they should ask for their invention.  Often they have an unrealistic idea of what it is worth.  The first thing they often think of is the amount of time,  effort and money they have invested in the invention.  They want the buyer to pay that investment back and generate a profit also.

That strategy is what Peter Drucker calls "Cost Driven Pricing".  The problem with using that strategy is that they buyer doesn't care a whit about what you invested in your invention.  What the buyer views as value is what he or she can earn from the invention.  Thus  "Cost Driven Pricing" will often cause an asking price to be set too high or too low.

The correct strategy is what Drucker calls "Price driven Costing".  To use that strategy one needs to figure out what the potential value of the invention is to the buyer.  And do to that  what is necessary is to do some market research in advance of setting a price. 

Market Research is an art in itself and if you can afford it and  consulting a professional will get you more accurate and defensible results.  But barring that you can learn a good deal just by Googling.  What you need to do is estimate what the total market for your invention might be, that is if everyone who could use the invention was to buy it (called the Total Addressable Market or TAM).   Then you need to figure the part of that market that the buyer of your invention might be able to capture. Called the Segmented Addressable Market or SAM).

For example suppose your invention was an automobile accessory.  Suppose the TAM for the whole market was 100 Million Dollars.  Further suppose your target company supplied 20% of that market or 20 Million Dollars.  If your invention could eventually provide 10% of the company's share of market, its value to the company would be 2 Million.  In that case you would need to set the price such that  that the return on investment for the buyer would be substantial, for example a $200,000 fee would represent a 10X return on the customers investment.


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

Doing your Own Market Research
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In this months article on ITTr, I point out the importance of doing market research in setting the asking price for an invention you want to sell or license.

While both Penguin and Balkin Information Services perform market research, there is a lot you can do for yourself before you contact a professional.

Further if you have already attempted to do your own research you will have a good idea of what you can easily find and what is hard to get.

Ruth has a favorite line which is if you can't find what you are looking for on Google in 10 minutes, give up and call Ruth.

That's a good metric to use.   Often my patent search clients will ask for a full search when they haven't done the most elementary Google search.

If you want to know if your invention is unique,  pretend you are a customer looking to buy it and  Google the internet looking for the closest thing you can find.  That will tell you how unique your idea is and who your competitors might be.

If you are looking for who might buy your invention do the same thing and look for who is already making something similar.  Then think about how you might improve on what is already in the marketplace.

The company that is first to market is not always the winner.  Its the company that best tailors their  product to the customer and the customer's understanding of what constitutes value that will win.

One great example of this is the Apple Ipod.  The Ipod was not the first music player but  Steve Jobs and his brilliant marketing team saw what the customer wanted and advertised  the Ipod as 1000 songs in your pocket, while the competitors were talking about how many Megabytes of storage their players provided.

So do your market research from the point of view of the customer that you want to attract and if you need help doing that or finding out where those customers are and what they are likely to  spend on your invention, give Penguin a call.

to rblazey@rochester.rr.com or
 visit our website at www.RochesterPenguinGroup.com
 or call us at (585) 520-3539
We appreciate your responses to our newsletters.  Please send us your comments.  We are always interested in what you want to know.  See the New Letters to the Editor link in the block below
 
Sincerely,
 

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC

Comments and Letters to the Editor

 

To Readers of the BML Newsletter:

 

Many of you have wished to comment on articles in the newsletter and up until now there has been no mechanism to do so.  Now if you wish to comment you can just reply to this article.  Please mention the issue of the Newsletter (Month, Yr) and the title of the article you are commenting on.  Add your name if you wish

 

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Dick Blazey

 




 

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