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Free Advice From a School of Hard Knocks Grad

Saturday, April 24, 2010 10:33 PM Posted by Andy Subandono

By Lyndol Hollingsworth

All my life I have been night blind. Unless there is some presence of light I cannot see my hand in front of my face in the dark. As fate would have it, late one night I was traveling home from a business trip on an isolated North Texas farm-to-market road when I had a tire blow out. I reached for my flashlight and was horrified to learn that the batteries were dead! Somehow, by feeling my way, I was able to change the tire and get home. That event in my life sparked the beginning of my career as an inventor and product developer. Like they always say "necessity is the Mother of invention". I wanted to purchase an impact wrench powerful enough to change a flat tire and be equipped with an on board light so I could use it in the dark. The tool had to operate off my car's battery so I wouldn't need to keep it charged up.

In the late 80s when all this came about, my Father had been a Snap-on Tools dealer for about 30 years. When I asked him if such a tool existed, he said "I have never seen one if it does". I investigated further and came up with zero. I thought to myself...if one doesn't exist...I'll just make one! Dad had a lot of scrapped out air impact tools and I had a close friend that owned a winch company. So, with scrap air tool parts, a used direct current motor from a winch, and the help of a local machinist, I created a crude model.

I remember connecting that homemade tool up to the battery of my pickup truck using a cheap set of jumper cables. By golly it worked! I proudly showed this tool off to all my buddies and one suggested that I file for a U.S. Patent. Its hard to imagine now but back in the late 80s, or the "dark ages" before the Internet, the best place for information was at the local library. I did find a lot of written information at the library but as you can imagine it was mostly in "text book" form. What I needed was first-hand knowledge from someone that had actually been through the patenting process. I asked around my area and could not find one person that had successfully obtained a U.S. Patent. I finally came to realize that for me to be a successful inventor meant being around other successful inventors. One of my high school buddies lived down in Austin, Texas so I phoned him to find out if he thought I could get some help down there. He told me that there were a number of Patent attorneys listed in the Austin phone book!

To make a long story short, I moved my family to Austin and by 1991 I received my first U.S. Patent for a "Direct Current, Direct Drive, Impact Wrench" complete with an on board work light! It still took me several more years to "perfect" and "field test" the tool before it was commercially available for sale. Little did I know back then that eventually this tool, that was once an idea in my head, would be purchased by our U.S. military and used in the Middle East to help make faster, safer tire changes under battlefield conditions! The success of this first product set the stage for several more commercially available products and others coming by way of a family-owned "product development" company established in 2006 here in Fort Worth.

Now that I have successfully taken several new product ideas from my head and turned them into commercially viable products, I believe I am well-qualified to give out a little free advice to anyone starting out on that rocky road I took over 20 years ago!

My first bit of advice is.....protect your new product idea by having everyone you discuss it with sign a "non-disclosure agreement" or what's commonly referred to as a NDA. After I got burned once I went to an attorney and had him draw one up for me. I have since used it about fifty times over the years.

Once you are 100 % certain you plan to file a "utility" Patent, file a "provisional" Patent application with the United States Patent Office. Do not make such a filing until you are 100 % certain you plan to file a "utility" Patent within one year or less. Why does that matter you ask? Well, if you don't file a "utility" Patent within one year you cannot ever file for the same technology with the USPTO.

Equally important is keeping your new product idea at "patent pending" status for as long as possible. If you wait until you are ready to get rolling with the development of the new product to file a "provisional" Patent you can legally label the product as "Patent Pending". Any would-be duplicator of your new product will think twice about doing anything as long as you have it marked as "Patent Pending". A Patent that is "pending" with the USPTO has not been issued so there is no way anyone can read the "claims" listed in it. This makes it impossible for anyone to "go around" your Patent. My impact wrench was such a hot item that several big tool companies tried to "go around" my issued Patent. Fortunately for me, the Patent attorney and I did a great job of creating very strong "claims" that were determined impregnable. Also, if your plan is to "license" your new product/invention and be paid a royalty, your "Patent Pending" status will be equally beneficial to your Licensee.

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