Customer Reviews

Inventing For Dummies

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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The book offers a good explanation to the tyro of what it takes to protect your invention. The book is not really about inventing, per se. Despite what the title says. A careful read of the contents reveals relatively little discussion about the raw inventing process. That is, how does one come up with an original idea that can be patentable? It may well be that such a question has no answer.

Rather, the book's contribution is to show the reader that, if you make something that you think is worth patenting, what are the necessary steps to do so. It explains how you can protect your invention from others. It focuses on steps that can be specifically described to you, and then performed by you. Like how to file a Provisional Patent Application. And how you can now do this electronically. (Which wasn't always the case.) While some of these steps are unique to the United States, in general they apply in most countries.

There is also a brief discussion about copyright issues in the book. But it is tangential to the main topic.

This book is incredible for beginners! It lays out from beginning to end, concept to production, what you need to do and watch out for as someone with an idea. It gives great websites and resources for every type of contact, organization, form...whatever it recommends. For example, it tells you to seek advice from a market research consultant before investing your money and then gives you a website to find these consultants. It even tells you to file this $10 idea protection form with the IPO if you are not ready to start on the very expensive, time-consuming patent application process. It tells what steps to take before that and why. And they are right! My friend is 2 years into her invention process and made the same mistakes this author claimed would happen. This cost her a lot of money and could have been avoided had she read this book first. I absolutely love this book for someone who has no idea how to begin. It's reassuring too. "If it's such a good idea then why hasn't someone else thought of it?" Read this book to find out why. And please don't quote me on my example above because I flagged that page for when I get to that part of my process, but for now I was vaguely recalling what type of consultant the author recommended just to make my point of how helpful this book is. Buy it and read it cover to cover!

For the new inventor who wants to know a lot in a short time - start here.
Written by the voice of experience. No riddles here, just answers and solutions that will help you move forward faster towards your protection, prototype, product, marketing and profits
Bob

Pam has used her considerable experience well in writing this book. I've recommended her as a consultant for several years and it's a pleasure to see how much she's been able to pack into the book. As both an inventor and a consultant, I'm confident that every inventor can learn something they didn't know from Pam.

Blan McBride

A very nice compact book on the procedures for filing patents and dealing with challenges. Written by someone who has a valuable amount of experience in this area.

I got this book for my brother. He loves it and is on his second read of it. Thanks so much. :)