UKC

I've got an idea for a climbing training aid, which I'm pretty sure would be better than the current optons on the market that do the same thing and producable at a reasonable price.

Any suggestions/thoughts on the best way to go about trying to get this to market -

- potential to get a climbing company involved, and which stage to do this?

- any notes on experiences of getting climbing related products patented most welcome?

Get the IP/patent sorted first before you approach anyone with your idea. 

thanks

The first thing to do would be to make one, to see if it works as intended, can you afford to or have the resources/equipment to do that? I'm assuming it's some kind of physical object?

If it's a single fixed item like a hangboard then knock one up out of wood by hand, if it's mechanical then perhaps you could get a plastic prototype 3d printed which isn't super expensive.

Once you have a prototype and some kind of IP protection as mentioned above, then you could approach manufacturers, or the trendy method these days is to do a kickstarter.
Any and all market research you can do to prove there is a demand for the product would be useful, either to show a potential equipment manufacturer or to prove to yourself that it's viable before you plough too much money into it.

Good luck!

Cheers.

A proto type should be doable pretty cheap

Check out nate murphys vids on bootube - he has gone through that sort of thing for a portable fingerboard aid. May be of use. 

Hi Rich, I develop medical devices for a living and am a business case/proposal developer in my current incarnation, here is the advice I give to academics or clinicians who do not have a business manager supporting them yet.

First of you need to check for prior art, you can easily have patents filed that describe what you are doing that have never made it into a tangible product but they still retain rights to the IP. You can do this yourself by checking Espace.net (https://worldwide.espacenet.com/), but you will need to be very broad in your search terms as you can imagine there are many ways to describe the same thing. I would also do some considerable searching on google, bing and scientific publications to ensure someone hasn’t discussed this in public already (hence there is nothing for you to protect). If you hit upon prior art problems here you could consider paying a patent attorney for help to define you inventive step to get around these problems giving you freedom to operate, this will cost you a lot.

Since filing a patent costs quite a bit, and the annual charges for the rest of the patents life are in the thousands depending on how many countries you want to protect your art in, you should consider keeping the idea to yourself as a business secret. Discuss your idea without giving away the inventive step with potential partners and manufacturers, if you want to go further insist on having a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) put in place first. Once signed off you can discuss the proposal in detail.

If you don’t have anything protectable as it’s been in the public domain in the past, then you route to market/commercialisation step on how you will guarantee return on investment needs to be absolutely bomb proof, as soon as you start selling people can start copying you. Unless your figures stack up you will never break even and the exercise will just put you into debt.

Hi Rich

I'm a patent attorney, so i know about the IP/confidentiality side of things.  But I'm not knowledgeable about the business side of developing/marketing a device.  My super brief comment on this would be to:

(i) build a working prototype.  Don't show/describe it to anyone.

(ii) ask yourself why anyone should care about your device over what is already available/published. In other words - what problem does your device solve that others do not.  Kinder on the fingers?  Easier to hang on the wall?  Portable?  Easily adjustable? etc  This is really very important.  Think deeply about why you bothered to develop the device in the first place.

(iii) ask yourself whether there is a market for it.

(iv) look around on Google to see what has been done before in an attempt to solve the above problem.

(v) read all about IP here http://www.cipa.org.uk/about-us/, and take your prototype to a qualified patent attorney, along with copies of the closest published documents ('prior art' in IP jargon).  Discuss with her what are the new features of the device, and what advantages flow from them.  Ask what sort of claims are likely to be granted.

(vi) Decide whether you want to spend around £5,000ish to have a patent application drafted and filed.  If yes then get it filed and then you can approach large companies to discuss collaboration etc.  Before approaching companies i suggest you get a confidentiality agreement (CDA in IP jargon) in place.  Your patent attorney can help.  On the one year anniversary of the filing date you will have to take further action at a cost of around £3-5K.  The big costs typically arise at 30 months after the first filing date. Again - you will need input from your patent attorney here.

(vii) If a company likes your idea then consider licensing them the IP for a % of sales. Or perhaps selling out completely for a lump sum.  Again, the patent attorney can help if you want.

Hope that helps!

Brodes

Good to know UKC has patent attorneys lingering! Just out of curiosity is there any real difference between a CDA and an NDA? I used CDA when in Pharma but Universities seem to like to use NDA.

To supplement  Brodes good points, you can buy a business case checklists for a reasonable amounts (<£20) which is essence goes into more detail on what Brodes and myself mentioned.

Regarding point ii. Consider what the causal link is between someone buying your device, what the outcome will be from its use, then finally what benefits will be realised from these outcomes.  Be realistic with your assessment, people will use your device in all manner of ways out in the wild, not how you intended it in you controlled environment (the difference between the latter efficacy, and the former effectiveness). If you can’t tie these together so people start achieving what they want in climbing then it’s a dead end.

Some of these checklists will give you expected returns on investment multipliers based on how far off the device is from being sold on the open market (e.g. <1-1yr = an ROI of x1.25) which may help when understanding the license deal for investment.

In addition to the very good IP-related suggestion, you also need to do some due diligence on the business case. Just because something is novel and useful doesn't guarantee that anyone can make money out of it. Have a careful think about how much it might cost to make & sell (raw materials, labour, overheads, distribution ...), what customer might realistically pay for it, how many you might sell (locally in the first year). If you want to get some idea or realistic multiples, do the same exercise for a known successful product similar you yours. If the results look anything other than 'very promising', you're probably on a hiding to nothing. If they look good, then you should attempt to validate those numbers (talk to lots of people, collate the data) and then you'll have something real to take to either another company or to investors. If you don't have that sort of BC data, they either not take you seriously or they'll fleece you - you have to impress them that you know the value of your product (to them, not to some hypothetical climbers).

I've dabbled in this and my conclusions are:

Be hugely pessimistic, its unlikely your idea hasn't already been thought of, why is it not already on the market?

Understand what IP really is, how it works and what it costs. Slap anyone who suggests mailing it to yourself is works just as well as the £10k legal version. 

Don't expect anyone to even let you through the door until you have the whole think really locked down. No one wants to spend an hour with you just to find out you haven't done your research or that they'll need to pay someone else to develop your idea. Most people wont let you through the door anyway, why would they? they employ 10 people to think up ideas, yours probably isn't as good. 

Consider that if some one really wants to then they will get round your IP protection. 

Remember that no product in this world exists as a single item. Hundreds of people produce carabinas, maybe a handful are unique but everyone is making money. 

Consider going it alone, done right you can have the project funded, built and in people's hands long before your IP protection is in place. 

It can be difficult if the product is its early stages where design, function, usability and performance are still being thought out. 

Also you need to consider design for manufacturing, where the manufacturing, assembly, distribution and sales may need to be as innovative as the actual product and may impact on the actual cost and selling per unit which comes later.

At the earliest stages you need to be able to answer, is it feasible and does anyone want it? Some people prefer Problem (know your customers and their problems), Opportunity (unmet want or need), and Solution (exploit the opportunity to address the problem).

Create what is called a minimum viable product, a prototype version that will answer as many questions as possible without investing too much into the product. This can be a £5 job with parts from B&Q or a scrap merchant. Advances in 3D printing also allow for rapid prototyping of custom bits and bobs.

If it helps some people prefer to use technology readiness level terminology (tlr) here is an example for medical or engineering devices https://tinyurl.com/ycvqqe9d. Explaining the development in terms of TLR helps show the risks and infers likely ROI at that stage.

That's true but if Tom Randall can sell a toothbrush and Beta Climbing designs can sell an extensible brush on a stick, anything is possible.

Those are two examples of incremental innovation and how state of the art innovation becomes a basic hygiene requirement for that product type.

 Essentially a toothbrush used to be the best thing until people got used to it, then they got annoyed with its shape, durability and poor bristles, so along comes your plastic Lapis types. This was fine and an improvement until people got used to it and got annoyed with its high price for something that annoyingly wore out at the tip or broke at the neck. Lapis et al then bring out the wooden versions, but this only solved some of the problems thus leaving a gap for a brush that solved these problems and gave you a place to hide your crack coccaine.

Unfortuantely it’s an arms race in terms of innovation and your product will only have a limited lifespan at the top before it’s replace by a self brushing brush that hovers like a drone, tells you the beta, vidoeos and uploads your send to YouTube, and carries a kilo of crack to the crag.

See my point about Carabiners. 

The recent launch of a training device (no names named) may give you some points on how not to go to market....

Actually he's not selling a 'toothbrush', he's selling his name.

One thing to consider before getting into patents is that the UK is a much smaller market than the US.   Most patent lawsuits get fought over US patents in US Federal Court.   If a large company is going to license the patent it is the US patent where the value is.

US patent law is significantly different from UK patent law and US attorneys have a different style when drafting patents from UK attorneys because they are familiar with US patent litigation.   The easy thing is to hire a UK patent attorney and let them deal with filing in the US as 'just another country' at which point you end up paying an expensive lawyer to write letters to another expensive lawyer.  My suggestion would be to hire a US attorney to draft the patent, because the US patent law industry is so much larger it is also easier to find a specialist in a niche area of technology where in the UK you may be lucky to.   I have found it easy to deal with patent drafting and filing over the internet.

Unless your invention is likely to be worth millions and you expect to raise money it may be that patents are a bad move.  The system is far better at making money for lawyers than inventors.  Even if you get a patent, if you don't look like you have the money and inclination to fight for it in court for years then large companies will often ignore it.

Hi Tom

OK I'll bite.  I still think the OP would be well-advised to seek some professional advice.  The first hour or so will likely be free.  If it's not worth £10K to protect the underlying concept, then perhaps it's not worth bothering with.  I'm sure the OP has other uses for his/her time.  Absolutely no offence to the OP intended.

Also - FYI - the usual approach is to draft a patent application (to an international standard), and then file it in any significant patent office.  The UK, US and European patent office are typical first-filing destinations ('priority' applications - in IP jargon).  That patent goes live in other countries if you take the necessary (expensive) steps at 30 months from first filing. 

Hopefully the OP will have an idea of whether the idea is a flyer long before the costly 30month deadline arrives. 

"Even if you get a patent, if you don't look like you have the money and inclination to fight for it in court for years then large companies will often ignore it."  Alternatively you can save the big nasty company a few million in legal costs by licensing/selling them your IP.  For a few million.  Nice.  

Fella if this is a fingerboard that forces you to use it somehow then I'm in. I'm not talking the beastmaker which allows you to nonchalantly walk past with a beer in one hand and an ice cream in the other. Some sort of aggressive AI that electrocutes  you if walk past having missed a session. And just hurls abuse at you even if you don't miss a session. Imagine just popping down stairs for a piece of toast and your fingerboard is whispering: bitch, you still owe me a set. I said 7x7 seconds! Get back on here right now you fat, sorry sack of shit. Put that bread back fatty. Put it back and come over here...

Defo possible this is. 

Motion sensor combined with the circuit from a remote shock collar built into a pair of underpants?

I was kinda thinking some sort of cyborg esk implant that just gives you a full on seizure on-demand. Via Bluetooth naturally. Couple that with the Alexa software and a basic facial recognition algorithm and it should work. Might dig out the raspberry pi and knock up a prototype later on. 

I agree that if you've got no experience with the system you need professional advice.  I'm a named inventor on 20 something US patents and have consulted to several large US law firms on prior art (usually as the expert for the big guy trying to invalidate the startup company's patent) including testimony in depositions and federal court so although I'm not a lawyer I've been round the block a few times.

My own preferred approach is to write the disclosure myself and file it in the US as a provisional and then wait a year to see how the market develops before deciding whether to hire a US patent lawyer to work on the claims.   But I would not recommend this to people who haven't been around the patent system for a long time.

My experience has been that there are far more patent attorneys in the US than the UK and it is easier to find someone who has strong background in the industry/technical field you work in which makes everything easier.  I also think that US patent attorneys do a better job of drafting for the US patent system.  It is really obvious when you read a US patent whether it was prepared by a US or European patent lawyer and I find the US style easier to read.

In my industry  (and it may well be different for climbing)  UK patents are a waste of time.  Pretty much all the litigation is in the US.   If you are going to spend money on lawyers to chase someone in court you do it in the big market where the courts will hand out large settlements or where if you get an injunction it will stop the competitor in their tracks.

I also think it is easy to be too optimistic about the chances of licensing an invention without building it and having a market presence or obviously having a lot of money behind you.   Corporations are pretty ruthless and engineers prefer to do their own thing rather than take someone else's idea without modification.  The most likely outcome of showing a corporation a new idea is that if they like it they change it a bit, do a product which they'd never have thought of without seeing yours but isn't quite a copy and give you nothing.   If you look underfunded and threaten them with a patent they will ignore you to see if you actually file suit. If you file they will stonewall for a year or two to see if you run out of money or can be scared off.   If it goes to court they will hire someone who is an expert in the field to search the prior art far more thoroughly than the patent office ever could.  

 It's a lot easier to close a deal if you have a market presence and their sales force starts to report to management about customers mentioning your product.

Would it also apply punishments if it determined that you were using the easy holds or weren't hanging on long enough?

Dunno. I was kinda thinking the USP would be the vitriolic abuse it would dish out. Voice packs, addons and such. I myself would pay decent money for the Stevie Haston pack. 

2 f*cking thousand pulls ups! What the f*ck do you call that!! 1000 more or I'll slap the shit out of you.you useless fat shit. 

This doesn't involve NLP does it? :-P

No it’s more like homeopathy; a single tear from Steve Haston diluted several thousand fold, sprayed as a mist onto your hands and face prior to training.

Thanks very much everybody! All very helpful or quite funny. Expertise on UKC is quite something.

I'm going to go away and try and make a prototype. 

I thought homeopathy required something that causes similar symptoms so you need to dilute the tears of a terrible climber.

Steve Haston is both terrible and great, as such is the perfect unguent for any aspiring homeopathic climber

As others have said rather than worrying about patents you need to find out if the device works, if there a genuine market for it and the size of that market.  Best way to do this is build a prototype and get lots of people to test it.  If its good this will build your market for you.

Realistically the market is not going to be worth much (for example):
Number of climbers and hill walkers (14+) active per month: 211,000  (Sport England)

Percentage of those interested in training - maybe 10%: 21,100

Percentage of those who might buy your product - 5%: 1055

Profit on each sale, lets say £10 - Therefore total profits from product ~£10k

As such getting lawyers involved is going to benefit no one as there's not enough money in the product for it to be worthwhile! Its also the reason why no climbing company is going to give you money for it at the moment. 

If it does turn out to be a roaring success then you can market yourself as the original and best - I doubt beastmaker have a patent on wooden fingerboards and holds.

I actually met Mr Haston yesterday and he was lovely. And he had a really nice dog. My missus wouldn't believe me when I said he a reputation for being really aggressive! 

If you are potentially interested in patents in the future then you need to be careful about this because disclosing your invention can lose your rights to file a patent in the future.   In the US under the 'on-sale bar' rule you get one year, in other countries once it is disclosed publicly then that's it.     So if you aren't sure and want to keep your options open either get a provisional patent filed before showing anyone the invention or get anyone you show it to to sign an NDA (or do both!).

You might also want to think about whether a registered design is more suitable than a patent for the product.