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1. 

   Hemanshu Jain January 28, 2015, 12:54 pm

   In my honest opinion make your prototype 1st and once the validation of your product is done you should think of patenting it.

   I have known a lot of makers who don’t even want to share their ideas. Honestly, nobody has the time to copy something quickly. If you want to make something make it quick and validate if it will sell or not.

   Do check out my hardware start-up and share it with your friends https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/diabeto-your-friend-in-diabetes-is-up-for-pre-orders-on-indiegogo 

   PS: We never patented this product instead we made it open source, so that there is a community who’ll help you make your product big. Opensource is the new way of life for product start-ups.

2. 

   asha chaudhry January 28, 2015, 1:00 pm

   brilliant answer hemanshu.

   raja – if you read the posts on trhs – everyone will say build first and validate fast. ideas are not unique. the way you execute them is. so no one will steal your idea.

3. 

   Raja Santosh Panda January 28, 2015, 2:34 pm

   Thanks for your insights Hemanshu.

   Checked out your diabeto post. Very Inspiring. Shared it with my friends on my twitter handle.

   Let me try to give some background info about myself and the idea, and see if it will change anything on the advise.

   Firstly, the idea in the topic is generated from an inconvenience that my family faced while using a very mundane & common home appliance product. In fact at this point am asking the question to myself, why they (the multiple vendor) of this product just didn’t make their product the way am thinking it should be. I think the answer to that question lies in the foreign invention origin of this product. So, the point is, the idea is about a “NOT so hard to make” (at least for entities who are making these kind of products) change to an existing product.

   Secondly, Am not ready for startup’s yet and still hold a full time job. But somehow knowing the power of patents I am hesitant to let “my insight” into this mundane product be compromised.

   Should i still build prototype first ?

4. 

   Raja Santosh Panda January 28, 2015, 3:03 pm

   Dear Asha,

   Thanks for your guidance. Appreciate that.

   Let me try to convey, what am trying to say, through an interesting example

   Here is a respected gentleman from financial services industry telling us that 40 years back (~1975) he thought of plastic collapsible tubes to be used for toothpaste, which was rejected by his then professor as unviable due to presence of rats in India. (Read the first para of the article link shared below)

   https://smartinvestor.business-standard.com/market/CFeatures-282765-CFeaturesdet-40_years_agoAnd_now_Stock_market_investing_You_cant_sow_today_and_reap_tomorrow.htm

   And, here you have Colgate Palmolive patenting the idea in 1963.

   https://www.google.as/patents/US3211342

   While the first plastic toothpaste tubes was actually introduced in 1990’s. 

   (In good faith, I assume that Mr. Parag Parik’s idea was original and had nothing to do with the knowledge of patent filed by Colgate Palmolive before it)

   My fear is, we Indian’s are probably still warming up to the idea of patents and it’s powers. 

   While for people trying to build startup’s and a workable business model it does make more sense to build a workable prototype “build first, test fast”. 

   But for someone like me (read my background info in reply to hemansu), am not too sure.

   In the above example,If Colgate palmolive had indeed waited till 1990 (commercial production) to file the patent for the idea and Mr. Parag Parikh had gone ahead with the idea and it’s patent in 1963 the situation might be very different today.

   Invite your thoughts.

5. 

   Hemanshu Jain January 28, 2015, 3:49 pm

   Hi Santosh,

   Thanks for sharing about Diabeto with your friends.

   Most of the product ideas come out when you see a problem and you want to try solving it out for people. The research one needs to put in is to figure out is why the product you were using did not do it? Plus you also need to validate it with your friends/family directly or indirectly if they are willing to buy the solution that you might wanna provide in future.

   Once you see that people actually might wanna buy it. Then you can research to figure out your costs of making it.

   Since you are working full time and unsure about starting up. I suggest if you at all think this idea is worth it…keep investing a little from the money that you are making and make a prototype. Try doing this in your free time. Even if this doesn’t turn into a scalable business…you’ll always be proud of something that you made yourself.

   Patenting costs are super high, higher then even making your prototype. I agree people have made millions by patenting stuff. But the trends are changing you’ll need to see the power of opensource to believe it. Android is the best example to prove it.

   Anyways, I wish you all the best for making this product a reality.

6. 

   Raja Santosh Panda January 29, 2015, 7:05 am

   Dear Hemansu,

   Thanks for your insights. I am thinking over it. At this point of time, am willing to spend the kind of amount needed to go for patent. And now am thinking on the lines of building the prototype.

   Any guidance, no how to go about building the prototype. I lack the equipment’s/setup to do it myself. Probably lack the skills too.

   Any pointers on how you did for your product. I need to give more thoughts on how to build the prototype and come up with answers.

   Thanks for your inputs.

7. 

   Rishi January 29, 2015, 9:26 am

   There is no right or wrong answer, and it’s tough to say without knowing what your idea is. However, unless you have something really compelling, filing patents is a huge expense for startup. If you are planning to file one in US, it’s going to be very expensive. Not sure if it’s worth spending that money without knowing whether the idea/prototype works. At least in my experience, things change a lot…so one thing you might want to ask yourself is are you at a stage where you think you have final specs.

   Also, patents are like double edged swords – once you file it, it’s public. So now it’s open for others to copy or modify and file another patent which is similar. You should talk to folks who did hardware/appliance stuff and how they went about it. One that comes to my mind is “dosamatic” (google it).

8. 

   Raja Santosh Panda January 29, 2015, 12:03 pm

   Hi Rishi,

   Thanks for your inputs. 

   I was thinking of patent in India. But you have a great point about patent’s being double edged sword.

   Thanks for the hint on dosamatic. Will try to work on those lines.

   Regards

9. 

   Raja Santosh Panda February 24, 2015, 4:00 pm

   Made some more progress. Found some good answers to my questions here https://www.inventor-mentor.com/articles/?show=start

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