The thing about Davidson is that they will give you all the resources you need to completely screw yourself. They are not a disreputable company, but you have to have a real idea of the worth and marketability of your patent going in. If your invention is for some new kitchen gadget, for example, you can go to them, pay them the $685 for the initial examination and then move forward in the process. But their process involves a second step where they help build a prototype and packaging. This step, depending on your invention, can cost many thousands of dollars. After that they will present the invention to companies that work with them.

The problem is that so many inventors get "gold fever". They are convinced that if they can just push on a little farther they will make millions. This is simply not the case. Only 1 in 200 patented inventions actually make money beyond the investment put into them. This is why, with some 50,000 inventions submitted to Davidson, only 8 in the last 3 years have actually turned a profit. It is not because Davidson is doing anything wrong, it is just that the inventors will keep pouring money in until they are bankrupt chasing the dream of becoming independantly wealthy.

If you have something, honestly evaluate what it is worth. If it is a million dollar patent, ABANDON IT. It will take more than that much to develop and market it. If it is truly revolutionary, if it is not likely to be obsoleted in 1 or 2 years, and it will sell in volume, then BEGIN to consider putting money into it.

Moreover, the quality of the patents obtained by these unscrupulous groups are usually dubious. If the scope of the claims is so narrow that you can't keep competitors at bay, your patent is useless. Yet these groups will narrow the claim scope for the sole purpose of obtaining a patent for you and raising their kill rate. Go with a decent patent attorney, and separately market your idea. Maybe file a provisional patent application to start off with (a bit cheaper than a full utility appln), which gives you a year to try to develop the idea and a business around it.

"You can license an idea to a firm, but they will generally want you to own the IP on it; therefore, you need a patent."

Yes, I've seen how venture capitalists will refuse to look at an idea if it isn't patented (admittedly only by watching a UK TV programme called "Dragons' Den").

But as an engineer who has had a couple of things patented through my job, I am far from convinced that a patent is worth very much. If I search through patents databases I find many seemingly identical inventions. Clearly each one must have some slightly unique twist which sets it apart from the others, otherwise it couldn't have been patented, right? Sometimes, though, I can see no noticeable difference at all so it strikes me that the first patent must have been virtually useless because so many people have been able to get round it - and maybe it was the original patent that told them exactly how to do it.

However, as soon as a venture capitalist sees that an invention is patented he's prepared to invest thousands in the project, as though the patent is some sort of official standard of originality and viability.

My experience of patenting something deeply technical through my job (for a large corporation) was that the patent attorneys didn't understand what the invention was, and asked me to write the main text for the patent, which they then re-worded in legal-ese jargon. I don't believe that anyone sat down and tried to work out how best to prevent other people getting around the patent, or whether the invention was actually worth patenting.