Patent Application

Over the recent weeks I’ve been looking into applying for a patent on something, in collaboration with a friend. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go into too much detail about exactly what we’re going to patent – that’ll have to wait a while ’til the application is done and registered, at least. Quite possibly even longer than that.

You see, one of the things we found out is that getting the full patent can take up to four years. So it’s quite possible that we couldn’t get the final sign-off – even if we applied right now – much before 2012. That’s a ridiculous amount of time.

And OK, it could come through a lot quicker than that, perhaps even halving the time scale. But that still makes it about 2010.

Now I do understand that there’s probably a whole heap of searches and procedures to go through, and endless hoops of bureaucracy, but bloody hell, up to four years. Talk about wheels going slowly.

Personally, I think it’ll be worth it. The idea is something that neither of us has ever seen, or heard mentioned anywhere. It’s got endless possibilities, particularly during Autumn and Winter (Ha, that’s got you thinking, hasn’t it?) and it’s got a fair number of applications once everything’s been patented. (or at least applied for and registered)

Will it make us millionaires? (Rodney) Probably not. But the thing is, you don’t know ’til you try. And when all’s said and done, well, it could make money, most probably in licensing etc. Time will tell- in this case probably a lot of time- but in the long run I think it could be a worthwhile venture.

(This last paragraph was brought to you sponsored by Clichés ‘r’ us)