Looking for recommendations - prototyping & patenting companies

[kessa]

Hi All,

This is my 1st post here so firstly "hi", and apologies if this isn't the right area.

I've been researching an idea for a couple of years now which I am interested in bringing to market and have decided to bite the bullet to see what it would cost to pursue it through patenting, prototyping, user & market research and eventually to manufacture.

I'm trying to find a (UK based) company that ideally can help with the entire process, but I'm struggling.

I've found a few companies, but either I've not had a response back from them, or I've found some bad past reviews, so I'm trying to get some recommendations for good companies which may be worth approaching.

Wish list:
1) UK based offices (but happy to consider a company that outsources manufacturing) - I'm in Oxfordshire, so ideally no further than Birmingham > London > Southampton > Bristol type catchment area.

2) Experience of creating extremely high quality, attractive, reliable & robust products for the consumer market.

3) A company offering support for the entire process from prototyping to patenting; user & market research, to design, to manufacture.

4) We keep 100% retention of the IP (I've seen one which retains IP for anything which is discovered during development of your product which I'm not sure I really like the idea of)



Known companies:
So far, I've shortlisted the following and would really love to hear if you've worked with any of these in the past 3 years:

innovate-design
design2market
bangcreations
designworksgroup
innovation-stream


However, if you know of any other really good companies I'd love to hear about them if they meet the above criteria.


A quick note:
I've seen a similar post on another site and it was filled with blatant plugs pretending to be testimonials (so not very helpful), so to help try to combat that, if you recommend a company can you please also provide details of:

a) the services they helped you with
b) an idea of when you worked with them (reviews for a company you worked with 10 years ago may not be that helpful if they've changed staff since so it will help with that)
c) the name / website address of your product (assuming this is OK with the site mods? If not, perhaps they can suggest an alternative way to root out any false info)
d) what you think they did well / what didn't they do so well
e) any tips you learnt from working with them (i.e. pitfalls to avoid, communication methods that worked well / didn't work well, etc)

Any additional info (an idea of costs, etc) would also be a huge help.

Many thanks,
Kieran

 

[red-source]

Hi Kessa,

If you do some searches on the forum for some of those company names you will find some info, some of it not good news. If you want to PM me a few more details of theproduct that you are interested in then I may be able to help further.

 

[kessa]

Thanks "Red Source". I did a search before I posted up this thread but it returned over 400+ results for the 1st company alone.
For example, I tried "innovate design" (with quotes for an exact match) and "innovate AND design" (without quotes, but with the boolean "AND"), but no joy - both returned over 400+ results.

I think it's because the search doesnt support exact phrase or boolean searching, so it seems to be returning a lot of irrelevant results.

Would you mind pointing me in the direction of any threads you think would be particularly useful/relevant?

Failing that, I'll try to use Google to do a search of the site.

Aside from the above companies, I'm also keen to hear of any other suggestions for companies which match the criteria above, so if anyone has any, please let me know.

Thanks
Kieran

 

[red-source]

I do remember this post, which you may find helpful;

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=216331&highlight=innovate+design

 

[kessa]

Thanks RedSource - that kind of useful (and kind of not) - there are 2 mentions not to use one of the companies I'm considering, but it doesn't detail why (or people don't want to say publically) which doesn't really help much (in the same way that unsubstantiated good reviews dont really help much)

Ideally I'm trying to find someone that can say:
"I used them to develop this idea - X -, it cost me this much, we had these issues along the way and overall I would/wouldn't recommend them"


That said, I do appreciate you taking the time to find that one out, so thanks for that.

 

[red-source]

I have heard good and bad said about a lot of companies so I tend not to publically trash them, unless I personally have had a bad experience. The one in particular mentioned in that previous thread I have heard numerous rumours, some from a person I know who had dealings with them and came away thousands of pounds worse off and no futher on with his development.

How far along are you with your development? If you want some guidance early on let me know and I will be able to help, im not too keen on the market research but could help out with the rest.

All the best

 

[kessa]

I'm still at the early stages of getting together as much statistical / evidenced based info as I can to help determine if the scale of the idea (and the market for it) is really going to be potentially as big as we all like to think our ideas might be lol

In parallel to that, I need to start investigating the costs of getting it patented (I have a rough idea of costs for that), and prototyping, hence this post as ideally I only want to approach a couple of companies to get a couple of comparison quotes.

I dont really want to approach any more than that as I want to keep the idea as quiet as I can until I'm ready to launch it. (I'm not entirely sure I trust NDA's entirely as it's hard to prove if someone has breached one if they give the idea to someone else on the QT)

Also, ideally, I just want 1 company to help with the whole thing.

Does anyone else have any experience of any companies matching the above criteria?

Thx

 

[kessa]

Still not having much joy.

Got a reply back from one of them (I won't say which to save them the embarrassment)..... it started of with "Hi Jason"..... great start, except my name is "Kieran". Not sure I fancy putting my faith in a company who can't even be bothered to get my name right.

Next!

 

[LemonDesign]

A one company does all approach is a recipe for disaster. Outsource each discipline to industry specific sectors.

 

[kessa]

LemonDesign - why do you say that? I would have thought that having everything in one place should (in theory at least) make things cheaper and quicker as:

a) everyone should (again, in theory) know how each of the other depts work, and what they need in order to help them fulfil their specific role, what tools, etc are available and what their specialise knowledge is for the company as a whole
b) a consistent language and set of documents
c) maybe all be in the same office, so able to all get together to show ideas, examples, etc
d) you only have 1 company wanting to gain a profit from getting the idea to market. If you split it amongst several companies, then I would have anticipated costs would be higher due to each needing to achieve their individual profit.

..... on the flip side though, I'm aware of the expression "putting all of your eggs in one basket" so do you mean there's more risk if they go belly up?

If there's significant advantages to going with multiple companies it's something I'll happily consider, but I'm ideally looking for evidence backed suggestions to help with any decision I make so if you have any case study / examples which you can share to provide more info as to why it could be a disaster that would be helpful.


On a slightly different topic in the mean time, I've found a couple of other possible contenders (but these don't both necessarily do everything I need, but do most of the tasks so close enough)

* Industrial Design Consultancy (IDC)
* Crucible Industrial Design

Has anyone used any of those?

(The others above either still haven't replied yet, or I've ruled out as they can't even get my name right which doesn't bode well to their attention to detail.)

 

[IP Consultant]

Hi Kessa

Please have a serious think about how much it will cost to manufacture a new product yourself, both now as a prototype, and later in volume. A client of mine was recently quoting £200,000 just to design the tooling and mould for his new (and rather simple) product.

If you have the funds to manufacture yourself, then manufacture could be the better route because you would tend to keep a greater percentage of the sales revenue than through licensing, but for many individual inventors, the more realistic route to market is licensing or assigning their IP to an existing industry player. The fact you have had this idea on the back burner for a couple of year implies you fit into this latter group.

With that in mind, what do you need to convince industry players of the worth of your idea? Is a prototype really necessary? Wouldn't drawings or a digital animation suffice? It is certainly easier and cheaper to send drawings and digital animations to industry players than a product. It's difficult to conclude what is the suitable route for you without knowing exactly what your product is of course, but normally drawings or animations will get the idea across enough to know if the industry player is interested or not.

If industry players are interested in your idea the only legal tool you have to stop them putting it on the market is your IP. It is this fact which can make an industry player interested in your IP. So, if you are going to licence or assign your idea to an industry player it is of prime importance that you obtain optimum IP protection for the idea, because if an industry player can find a weakness in your IP protection they will invariably exploit it by designing around your IP.

I hope this helps. If you have any questions you are welcome to contact me.

Best wishes

Matthew

 

[captaincloser]

Also look at full patenting costs. Costs of patent searches being a fraction of the cost of full patents and full patents being a miniscule fraction of the cost of defending a patent against a large organisation. Do not get sidetacked with design patents.

The inventor's biggest single problem is to avoid having their ego massaged...inventing is very close to the massage business. Helping inventors is a huge business particularly in USA.

Inventors have free reign on how much high ground they take for themselves with their knowledge and ideas and there are plenty out there who will inflate them as much as they want to be inflated. Usually at inordinate cost.

Call me cynical if you will but I assure anyone that the number of people who get back more than they invest in their idea is up there with the four leaf clover, the lottery winner and world peace (combined usually)

 

[IP Consultant]

Captain

You are correct to say patent (procedural and enforcement) costs can be significant, and the inventor really should weigh these costs against their likely return.

Where patent costs are an issue, I advise clients to select a limited group of major countries at the PCT national phase stage, rather than trying to patent in too many places, so that their money takes them further.

As far as litigation costs, there are some options to bring enforcement costs down. Take UK IPO opinions on infringement and validity for example, where the official fee is just £200. You will have to pay your IP representative to collate the evidence and obtain the opinion on your behalf, but charges will still be an order of magnitude less than court proceedings.

If you must go to court, certain court proceedings cap the legal costs that can be claimed by the victor, with the likely effect that bigger businesses will spend less on legal actions, thereby evening up the playing field with individuals and smaller companies.

Also, far from indiscriminately massage inventors egos, where the invention appears to be known or obvious on the basis of general knowledge, I advise clients to spend some time doing a search of their own, rather than conducting a patent search or preparing a patent application for them. If they do a search and come back to me undeterred, so be it. But more often than not, they will find knockout prior art and go no further, ultimately saving themselves a great deal of time and money. I like to think it is because of this approach, that I genuinely struggle to think of the last client that has had their application rejected at the UK IPO.

 

[Kevh1981]

From my experience dealing with clients who have used this sort of company, I would suggest not using them at all. While they may be able to provide you with a fantastic prototype, they are not experts in Intellectual Property as they will have you believe.

As an example, a certain London based firm who I had better not mention, claim to have over 10 years expertise in IP as well as employing a "qualified patent agent". In reality, they employ a newly qualified solicitor with very limited IP experience (probably an IP module as part of his law degree)

My advice would be to visit a patent attorney early on for advice on whether your product is patentable or not. I like IP Consultant's approach of getting the client to perform a search themselves. Like IP Consultant, we would only recommend this if it appears probable that something is not going to be patentable.

If you do need someone to develop something for you then most of the firms you mentioned will do a good job but just do not entrust your IP protection to them unless they genuinely do employ somebody qualified and experienced to perform the work they offer. If in any doubt contact CIPA, the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorney's to see if someone is actually on their membership list.

 

[kessa]

There's some interesting info there (esp that last line from Kevh1981) Thanks.

I'd like to try to avoid going too far off topic though if I can help it, as the aim of this thread was try to to find a good prototyping company, so whilst I will need deal with the idea of patenting, I'd like to focus on that 1st hurdle of finding a good, reliable & trustworthy prototyping company to work with first of all.

 

[Morraine]

To be honest if this is something you want to patent then you first port of call is a patent attorney who will perform a patent search for you.

If you are on a budget you can go to the British library http://www.bl.uk/bipc/ in London near King's cross train station and speak confidentially to a patent expert librarian in the Business and IP center for free and will also help you do a patent search on their own patent database which is the largest in the world. This is also a good place to get advice about other aspects of business and do a few free short courses on Intellectual property and using the libraries massive resources fro free.

 

[David Warrilow]

To be honest if this is something you want to patent then you first port of call is a patent attorney who will perform a patent search for you.

If you are on a budget you can go to the British library http://www.bl.uk/bipc/ in London near King's cross train station and speak confidentially to a patent expert librarian in the Business and IP center for free and will also help you do a patent search on their own patent database which is the largest in the world. This is also a good place to get advice about other aspects of business and do a few free short courses on Intellectual property and using the libraries massive resources fro free.

Hi

I'm a patent attorney at London IP.

What approach you take to commercializing your invention depends on many factors. You may care to read our article here that discusses some of them:

http://www.londonip.com/patent_or_prototype.html

Coincidentally, in the near future we are running a seminar at the British Library on this subject (planning, prototyping and patenting - what, where, when) in partnership with one of the companies you mention - Bang Creations. It's on the morning of the 12th of December and will shortly be advertised on the British Library website. Do come along!

Before spending any money definitely do some free searching yourself on espacenet:

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/advancedSearch

I also do free 1-to-1 advice sessions at the British Library. If you're interested you can book through the Library:

http://www.bl.uk/bipc/advice/askexpert/davidw/davidw.html

You may also like to have a session with Mark Sheahan:

http://www.bl.uk/bipc/advice/askexpert/marksheahan/marksheahan.html

Cheers

David

 

[vvaannmmaann]

Speak to these people.
http://www.workingmodel.co.uk/cms/about

 

[Calibre Designs]

Hi Kessa.

I really do not mind pointing you in the right direction and advise you on what pitfalls you may encounter along the way. I have designed, developed and brought to market many products for the cosmetic industry (packaging) over the last 12 years+. Estee Lauder, L'Oreal and Boots to name a few. I liaise with factories in China, Thailand and India on a daily basis. My colleague is based in Shanghai.

Prototyping depends on the product and materials. We usually deal with hand held sized products. Rapid prototyping is conducted on our 3D Z-corp printers.

We are involved with plastic injection moulding mainly but also involved with various fabricated items.

Patenting side, we subcontract that out to our trusted partners.

If any of this interests you then do not hesitate to give me a shout.

Thanks

 

[Swisaw]

1- Develop a good ethical values. When you sign None Disclosure Confidentiality agreement, stick to it, don't mention names. But first do a very good homework, especially before parting with your money.


2- First do all the patent application for your idea by yourself. To learn to do that get details of 'how to apply for a patent from Intellectual Property Patent Office, IPO, at www.ipo.gov.uk.


3- Familiarise yourself with all nuts and bolts of patent applications, especially how to write 'CLAIMS'. 'CLAIMS' are used to distinguish your new idea from previously known ideas, prior arts. You get a patent for what you 'CLAIM' only


4- You have to pay IPO for patent search. That is a legal requirement. So use that for a maximum benefit, for a full search. It is only £120.00 online + another £20.00 online for application


5- To use IPO for full search, use 'CLAIMS' for the full specification of your idea or claim every bits, pieces, nut and bolts of your idea. Don't worry at this stage if some of your claims are not new. You can rewrite the claims later.


6-A- IPO searches in line to what you have claimed, they don't search according to the specifications and drawings. They should find and send you details of any applications, claims, similar to yours. Ideally they should do that 100% but we live in a practical world.
6-B-Before CLAIMS by Patent Office, now Intellectual Property Office, described as meaningful full sentences to distinguish a piece of land beside exactly another piece of similar land. If this is still valid one could claim skillfully a prior art for a new use.

7- When you receive details of the search, change and rewrite your claims accordingly. You can change everything except technical details and drawings. This is a very critical stage. Try to use a patent attorney to do that if you can afford it.


8- European or world patent cooperation treaty bodies are very expensive. To patent abroad use UK IPO, which may not cost anything. First apply in UK and use the date of UK application as the priority date when you apply in any other country. Alternatively apply straight to the patent office of the country, where you want your patent be marketed.


9- Whatever, a patent attorney provides you, should become your property. So if you used one to get a patent in UK and you want to take your patent to USA, you may not need to use a patent attorney again, just use what the patent attorney gave you in UK. If you want take the patent to a None-English Speaking country, use a firm specialised to translate legal documents to translate, what your UK patent attorney gave you, to the language of that country.

10- Try to make a prototype after you applied for a patent and check if it is satisfactory. Try to make the prototype by yourself or use the service of a local small workshop. At this stage CAD or programs to control machines may be too expensive and unnecessary. For my 'A Better Cookware Concept' I have been offered CAD or programs controlling machines, costing from £2500.00 to £30k when all I needed and asked was a prototype model for my own tests.


11- If it is satisfactory, evaluate the competition, production cost and retail price. After that act accordingly, like contacting investors, super markets, manufacturers......etc.
12- UK patent grant only protects you in UK. Others can make and sell the same thing in other countries but they can’t make patent applications.
13- You can use the date of UK patent application as a priority date to apply in other countries within one year from the date of the application.
14- You can apply for a patent in any other countries as long as details of your concept is still confidential. Once the details published or you disclose it, you can not apply for a patent after that.
15- IPO publishes completed applications after 18 months. You can ask IPO not to do so with your completed application.
16- Total cost of a UK patent is £20.00 application fee + £120.00 Search Fee + £80.00 extensive search fee = £220.00 online. That is a peanut.
17- Apart from this £220.00, it doesn’t cost anything more for four years from the date of application. If you couldn’t make something out of it within these four years, you would be better to forget it, don’t renew it.
18- As the last resort, how about following this strategy:
A- Concentrate on UK, forget other countries.
B- To get UK patent to guarantee your monopoly on UK market, try to finish the application as soon as possible to get more time within the four year limit.
C- After getting the patent, disclose full technical details to encourage other people, lets call them counterfeiters, to make it and market it in other countries.
D- The counterfeiters can make it and sell it in other countries but can not patent it. If the product proved commercially viable thousands of new counterfeiters come to the market. This creates a cut throat completion. Most of them get banckrupted and the remainder are going to have a hard time.
E- None of them can make it in or imported to UK without your agreement and each one of them will want to be the first to offer you a best deal to get UK market without competition.
F- On the other hand you can use the success of counterfeiters abroad to get backing to make it for UK market and exported to compete with counterfeiters abroad.
19- You could consider to renew the patent for a few years, which have to be done on the fifth year after the year of application. First year cost is £70.00. After that each year increases by £20.00 over the previous year. It goes like this: 70, 90, 110, 130 . . . to the end.
20- Don’t worry about infringements. Infringements happen by mistake or misunderstanding, which can be rectified without costs. In any case don’t let it to be an obstacle to your ideas.
21- USA patent office offers a sort of provisional application at $150.00 or around £100.00 for a year. Check how to reconcile this with UK patent application to buy time if you want to take your patent abroad after UK.
22- Be careful of the advices to buy the saddle before the horse. I asked them to make me a prototype for my test to prove the concept, they advised me it was better for me to have CAD animation first.

 

[laguna]

I'm still at the early stages of getting together as much statistical / evidenced based info as I can to help determine if the scale of the idea (and the market for it) is really going to be potentially as big as we all like to think our ideas might be lol

In parallel to that, I need to start investigating the costs of getting it patented (I have a rough idea of costs for that), and prototyping, hence this post as ideally I only want to approach a couple of companies to get a couple of comparison quotes.

I dont really want to approach any more than that as I want to keep the idea as quiet as I can until I'm ready to launch it. (I'm not entirely sure I trust NDA's entirely as it's hard to prove if someone has breached one if they give the idea to someone else on the QT)

Also, ideally, I just want 1 company to help with the whole thing.

Does anyone else have any experience of any companies matching the above criteria?

Thx

Have you considered alternatives to filing a patent, in particular would you consider brand protection with copyright, design right and trademarks?
Infringing such rights is criminal whereas infringing a patent is a civil matter and very much more expensive in bringing an action.

ND's are next to useless when you disclose "confidentially" to someone you think will evaluate your ideas when in fact its a useful tactic exploited by a competitor who gets his/her agent to approach you to find out your trade secrets!

I would suggest whatever course of action you pursue, would be to signup with creativebarcodes.com and put a time stamped signature on all your creative works for the cost of just £30 per annum for up to 5 barcodes. Only then should you consider disclosure to a prospective third party, and are safe in the knowledge that you (and they) know and accept that you are the originator providing evidence of priorart. Your barcodes are generated and redistrubutable to anyone willing to accept and agree to the trust charter. Access to your sensitive information is logged and recorded. They are also endorsed by IPO too for arbitration service in case of disputes. These barcodes are scanned by smart phones for conceptual ideas and creative works and/or are signatory to the ones already within the public domain.

 

[David Warrilow]

Hi

I'm a patent attorney at London IP.

What approach you take to commercializing your invention depends on many factors. You may care to read our article here that discusses some of them:

http://www.londonip.com/patent_or_prototype.html

Coincidentally, in the near future we are running a seminar at the British Library on this subject (planning, prototyping and patenting - what, where, when) in partnership with one of the companies you mention - Bang Creations. It's on the morning of the 12th of December and will shortly be advertised on the British Library website. Do come along!

Before spending any money definitely do some free searching yourself on espacenet:

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/advancedSearch

I also do free 1-to-1 advice sessions at the British Library. If you're interested you can book through the Library:

http://www.bl.uk/bipc/advice/askexpert/davidw/davidw.html

You may also like to have a session with Mark Sheahan:

http://www.bl.uk/bipc/advice/askexpert/marksheahan/marksheahan.html

Cheers

David

Further to my above post the seminar we are running at the British Library is now advertised, and you can book a place through here, if interested:

http://www.bl.uk/bipc/workevents/pppinven.html

In the seminar we hope to answer all the questions you might have with regard to prototyping and patenting. What, when, where? etc.

Cheers

David

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

Further to my above post the seminar we are running at the British Library is now advertised, and you can book a place through here, if interested:

http://www.bl.uk/bipc/workevents/pppinven.html

In the seminar we hope to answer all the questions you might have with regard to prototyping and patenting. What, when, where? etc.

Cheers

David

Just to advise you one has to be a paid member to advertise/offer paid services /products.

I looked at the seminar and I see it costs money to attend.

 

[David Warrilow]

Just to advise you one has to be a paid member to advertise/offer paid services /products.

I looked at the seminar and I see it costs money to attend.

Is that right?

You seem to be on a campaign tonight. I'll subscribe if it makes you feel happy.

David

 

[David Warrilow]

As a fully paid-up member......

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Patent firm and prototyping company putting on seminar at the British Library.

To Book a place visit here:

http://www.bl.uk/bipc/workevents/pppinven.html

David

p.s. If all you're going to do is moan, they should take your teeth away....

 

[kessa]

Can we keep the thread on topic please as helpful though some of the response have been, none have actually related to the question in hand.

Just to recap, my question was about whether or not anyone could recommend a prototyping and patenting company. It wasn't about how to protect an idea, etc as that's been cover loads elsewhere.

Thanks

 

[David Warrilow]

Can we keep the thread on topic please as helpful though some of the response have been, none have actually related to the question in hand.

Just to recap, my question was about whether or not anyone could recommend a prototyping and patenting company. It wasn't about how to protect an idea, etc as that's been cover loads elsewhere.

Thanks

Hi Kessa

I think the posts are on the verge of on topic.

Firstly, prototyping and patenting are entiely separate things. So don't look for both in the same company.

Also, what do you want a company to do? What is your route to market? You might only need a prototype (and no patent for the moment) if your plan is to make the thing yourself. Equally you might only need to patent it (and no prototype) if you want to license it.

How do you want to live your life?

David