Patents received by FIRST Teams

[dtengineering]

There may be a reason why there aren't more patents issued to FIRST teams, despite the inventiveness that occurs all around the world during build season. As cool as it is to get a patent, it can be a very expensive process. It doesn't make much sense to file unless you can expect to generate a financial return of, I would suggest, in the order of several tens of thousands of dollars.

I would expect that FIRST teams have made many patentable inventions, but have realistically looked at the market and said, "It isn't worth it." to patent. I don't want to suggest that it isn't worth your while to patent... I'm sure Dean Kamen would correct me on THAT... but you have to ask why you are patenting. Generally the idea is to make a profit.

Now if a team/inventor has handy access to some free patent expertise, has created something novel, useful and not obvious, and would like to spend a few bucks (and many, many hours of writing and researching) to get a patent they could start by filing a provisional patent. These are relatively inexpensive, are not examined, and will hold your patent for you for a year while you assess the market. At the very least there is an excellent chance you will learn a great deal about patenting even if your invention is not likely to be marketable. When teams speak of filing a patent, they may be referring to a provisional patent, and thus we may hear of teams talking about patents but those patents will not be converted from provisionals into full patents.

Just my .02 on why you might have a fairly short list of FIRST related patents...


Jason

P.S. Two other tips if you have invented a profitable product and choose to go down this path: keep careful records and be VERY sure you know who the inventors are (it is not always easy to document who made "inventive contributions" to the patent) and be very careful about public disclosure of your idea. Discussing it with other FIRST teams, or FIRST judges, or basically anyone not on your team who hasn't signed a non-disclosure statement before you file can limit your ability to claim the patent in some jurisdictions. (Just because you file in the USA does not mean your invention is automatically protected in other nations, many of whom have patent laws that differ from the US in significant ways.) If your patent IS sufficiently profitable you can expect it to be subject to legal challenges... if you don't have a "tight" patent, or the funds to defend it.... it really isn't worth much more than something cool to put on a resume. Not that there is anything wrong with that...