New idea of engine and security window idea

[Daniel Cook 1Participant @danielcook1]

Hi Nice to meet you all. My name Is Daniel Cook. I'm messaging to ask for advice and maybe help as I have an idea of creating a new style steam engine to fit vehicles of the current age, aswell other vehicles such as military, land,air and water. I've also got an idea of security for a window tint design. Both of these ideas are copyrighted but please don't take them from me as I've had these ideas from a very young age and have done mechanics upto level 3 and art and design level 3 and motorsport level 2. Please can you give me advice or point me in the right direction. Bare in mind I have no funds to fund this and would love to bring it to life and make a new start for engine's. And maybe make some money within it. Thanks. Dan

[Daniel Cook 1Participant @danielcook1]

I’m trying to make an engine with the idea and a window idea for vehicles

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Dragons Den! Dave W

[Daniel Cook 1Participant @danielcook1]

How do I apply? Lol. I dont exactly have the confidence to go on show

[CalumParticipant @calumgalleitch87969]

Hello Daniel and welcome.

The first thing I would recommend you do is research and understand the law around "intellectual property". There are several different types: copyright, patent, trademark, and so forth. It's important when you're working with a potentially valuable idea that you understand what the legal protections you have and can get are. In particular, you can't copyright an idea: copyright is complicated, but it only applies to something that actually exists.

I don't know much about steam engines (or window tinting, for that matter), but one think I can tell you is that in general, ideas aren't the tricky bit – the tricky bit is (a) turning it into a working design that can be manufactured, and (b) selling it.

A good starting point might be to create a computerised design, using a package like Fusion 360 or OnShape, so that you can work out what will be involved in making your device.

[Daniel Cook 1Participant @danielcook1]

Hi Calum, thank you for the advice. I would try to patent it but I don't have the money to do so, I have copyrighted the main idea but I'm not sure if it covers the whole design as you just explained it needs to be a physical object. I'm a one man group to these ideas so I'm doing all the work on my own.

[JAParticipant @ja]

Daniel

Patents were introduced to allow inventors time and protection to exploit their ideas. Actually they keep lawers and accountants employed. As one who had three patents until they were bought off me when I retired I will make a few comments.

1. Patents have value. They can be sold and, as assets, used to adjust the value of a company.
2. Once your patent application is published you have told the world of your invention. If it is of interest many will seeks ways of using the ideas without infringing it. Others will just infridge it. To protect your rights you have to take them to court which costs money (this has been a good business model for some).
3. To develop you ideas you need money. General investors will want a share of the cake, frequently all. The lucky patent holder, like James Watt, will find a good business partner. The really unlucky, such as Whittle, are helped by the government
4. It takes time to develop the idea by which time the patent may have lasped or not been renewed. What is now considered by some to have been, potentially, the most valuable patents of all time, Hedy Lamarr's wireless frequency hopping concept, died this way.
5. Some ideas have just been given to the world, Stephenson steam engine reversing gear for one.
6. Some inventors kept the idea secret and exploit it without outside aid or a patent. Henry Bessemer made his money from producing gold ink.
7. You need to be a salesman

I wish you every success.

JA

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Daniel, you don't say where you are located but in most of the world you own the copyright in a literary or artistic work as of right with no need to register it. So if you have a written description of a concept you can prevent other people publishing that description but not from using the concept as such. So for example, a company could read your engine description, make an engine based on it and sell it, without you being able to stop them. But you could stop them using your description, or a work derived from it, in their product documentation for example. IIRC it is only in the USA that you register copyright.

The way to protect ideas or concepts is through patents. An idea has to be new, not described in the open literature anywhere in the world, not obvious to "one skilled in the art", and capable of industrial application. To take what you wrote elsewhere on this forum about your engine for example, a patent examiner might judge that flash steam engines were prior art. Given that copyright only protects the expression of an idea not the idea itself, you clearly need to be very careful about what you publish even though you can assert your ownership of copyright on the document itself.

You can (in the UK) still (I think) file a patent specification free of charge. I have certainly filed a couple where i went along to the patent office, handed over a couple of envelopes and signed forms, and was given a stamped receipt showing date and time of filing. It does start to cost you when you file claims (which describe what you actually want to protect) since these need to be examined and the patent office starts to incur costs of an expert examiner. Costs mount up when you get a patent agent involved, when it gets closer to grant, and especially if you start filing internationally. Unless you have the funds to cover these patents are of little value, so it is very important to carefully review all the published work that could affect your priority and prevent a patent being granted. It saves a lot of time, bother and money. I used to run patent schemes in 4 different companies, and lose count of the number of times an engineer comes up with a great idea only to find that someone else has patented it, or it is described in the open literature. Google is your friend here – try searching on short succinct descriptions of your invention in different terms and see what comes up in the first page of results – often one finds links that are related and following those you find others. After chasing a few you can get a good idea of how novel your idea is.

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