INVENTION or IDEA?

Do you know the difference?

Have you created an idea you think is worth Millions. If so, you are like most people, you have thought of at least one worthy idea. But you did nothing. A few years later you have the unfortunate experience of seeing your idea brought to market by someone else. "I thought of that," you say, but did you really? By definition an idea can not be patented or protected. Only inventions can be patented and protected under government law. Thus, you as an inventor need to know the difference. So you can create inventions not ideas.

"Ideas" can be thought of as inventions with no substance. Ideas lack any physical reality. For example, you could have an idea for a car that would run on electricity and be able to drive 250 miles on a charge. This "idea" does not become an invention until you define the structure within the electric car that allows it to do this. You must describe the design of a better battery that makes the longer range possible. Or possibly you redesign the structure of the car to make it lighter and more aerodynamic to give it greater range. These would be inventions if you could describe in some way how you were going to make the battery better or car structure lighter and aerodynamic. Inventions are tangible things that you can describe well enough that someone else could build it. To get a patent the challenges are even greater, you must have an invention, be able to describe it well enough that someone else could build it, and the invention can not have already been invented. The actual legal requirements for a patent are much more complicated than just coming up with a new invention, but this is basically what is required.

There is however a lot of gray area between inventions and ideas. Just how much structure is needed to make an idea into an invention. According to that patent office sufficient structure must exist for the invention to function, or at least could be made to function using the technology available at the time. Just remember abstract ideas without any supporting structure can not be patented. Also, inventions that obviously don't work cannot be patented.

If this is all confusing don't worry. InventionMakers is also in the business of patenting and developing Ideas. We take "ideas" people have and make "inventions" out of them so they can be patented, manufactured and marketed.

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