Invention, Or Adaptation?

[Lemuel]

I work for a music instrument manufacturer and distributor. (We're more distribution, actually. All our manufacturing is done in China and we import products from Sweden.)

Anyway, I've proposed a small line of products to the boss, and it looks like we may indeed develop them.

Now, there's nothing like them on the market, but it's not necessarily new, meaning the simple technology and design specifications can be found in a number of other products, but not all of them at once in a single product. Everyone else that makes products like it makes them cheaply, leaving off (what I see are) essential, practical features.

(I suppose an analogy would be an ATV crossed with a jet ski ... making it truly "all-terrain". My idea isn't quote so involved, though.)

My question is this: Is my product idea an invention, or simply an adaptation, making the product what it really should be? My thought is that it isn't ...

[skap35]

Could you be a bit more specific about the features you are trying to add and what the product is that you are trying to improve? And that sounds like adapting an existing product, not inventing something new. You are taking features found in a number of existing products and combining them into a new product. But you aren't adding any completely new features.

[Unconquered]

Could you be a bit more specific about the features you are trying to add and what the product is that you are trying to improve? And that sounds like adapting an existing product, not inventing something new. You are taking features found in a number of existing products and combining them into a new product. But you aren't adding any completely new features.

As Ayn Rand noted, to paraphrase: all creativity amounts to human rearrangement of that which already exists. Synthesizing "blocks" into a new device most certainly *is* some kind of invention. A great number of patents refer to devices that actually could not be built without licensing patents from somebody else. (Surprising but true, I found this out recently because I've been studying patents, for inventions of my own.) i.e., your invention might rely on Widgets A and B, which are still under patent, but use them as part of a new idea.

Even if the pieces of the invention were obvious and non-patented, the overall invention may be patentable. Or to put it more strongly, every single thing that Man can make, can be turned into pieces that are obvious - i.e., the chemical elements. This just reinforces A.R.'s observation. All of the complexity we see in the world is a rearrangement (both natural and man-made) of less than 100 basic types of atoms.

So, as an additional note to synthlord: DO NOT describe your idea here, or any other public venue. Do not even discuss it privately unless it's a lawyer you've hired, or somebody who's signed your NDA. You can lose patent protection if the idea becomes public before a patent is filed. There is something called a provisional patent that's cheap and does not offer much protection, but it does establish an invention timeline. If you want one excellent site, this is the U.S. patent office.

Does your company have a patent lawyer? If not, it certainly should hire one.

[Lemuel]

Oh, yeah, we've got legal protections out the yin-yang. Our company bought an entire division from another manufacturer a year ago, and we had to go through the licenses, trademarks, old parts, technology schematics, and so on. What I'm doing isn't nearly as complicated.

But no, I won't go into details until they're in production and legally protected. It's not a tremendously Earth-shattering thing (ie a Galt engine, or Rearden Metal), but it's important enough to me that I keep it to myself for now.

Thanks for your comments, Unconquered. Quite insightful and inspirational ... I'm more excited to get this project rolling! Once I get the new Whatchamajigger made, I'll post the news in this forum.

If anyone can truly appreciate the process of creating something new, and bringing it to physical fruition ... and hopefully making some nice bank ... it's my friends here at OO.net!