speaker

The vortex thread said the yard was being cleared to make room for a housing development. In '06 that probably sounded like a good idea.

Any updates or thoughts? I took TIG classes and continually trolled craigslist looking for a good used one. A month or so back I read an interview of Jamie from Mythbusters and he made the most sense on why owning a basic MIG trumps all. I am curious now how you still like the Northern?

My $0.02 - I have several patents but the rights are held by the company I worked for. They are only as good as your willingness to defend them, i.e. how much money you wish to spend should you get copied. As stated, a patent is easily written around an existing one. Indeed, on one of mine I discovered several other & completely valid ways to do the exact same things. What I realized during the process is that the writing of the patent & claims itself is only ~1/2 of the deal. The other ~1/2 is the role the patent attorney plays with the examiners to get the your item through their process. Time from submission to issuance on mine were from ~10 months to ~3 years and on one, weekly contact between the attorney to the examiner. All said & done, I don't have much enthusiasm for patents and believe if you get caught up in feeling you need one, you won't go forward. In your situation I would do the following: (1) Write up as comprehensive a description as possible detailing every feature, benefit, first use & application of it, etc. and include pictures & diagrams of it. (2) Notarize every item of the above with an impartial witness. (3) Seal it in a heavy 9x12 envelope and sign over the flap. (4) Send it to yourself via registered mail, signature require and upon receipt, lock it away in your firebox. You have basically documented and dated your idea at a fixed point in time by doing the above. It isn't a bulletproof way to assign IP (intellectual property) to yourself (like a patent) but it does carry some weight. I had asked my company patent attorney about ideas I had outside of work and how I could document them? The above method is what he told me and it does carry some weight should the origin of an idea ever come into dispute. What you have done already is as powerful as the patent from a commercial standpoint. You have made working models of tools and received solid feedback that they are viable. Companies get started on much, much less. I'd be inclined to 'go for it' and start building your tools & selling them. The key to getting your cost of goods down (so you can make more profit) is to commit to higher volume production with your supplier(s). Find out where their price breaks are, 50, 100, 500, etc? Most companies won't require you to take the entire lot in one shot but will let you do stage releases as long as you take them all within some time frame from 90 day to a year. The only thing you need to worry about in all this is not if your idea is patentable but if you've inadvertently infringed on someone else's. This is likely where Lisle is coming from and why their ND is written so they have all the cards. They will want to crawl through anything remotely related to your idea to be sure that it cannot be construed as a rip-off of another patent. They will be the ones in court with their deep pockets should someone, perhaps someone like you that hold the patent, see your tool set and decide that it was close enough to his own IP to warrant a suit. Ain't getting a good idea out there for others to use grand? :-\

I registered for this forum based on this thread. Go Man Go! This is an amazing saga.