Help - Leasing a Patent for a New Folding Knife Lock Mechanism

Another Debbie Downer here. I feel like things are at the point (for the little guys) that it's nearly pointless to patent anything that ends up successful. If it becomes profitable for the mfg, China will instantly copy it, so if many are sold, you have maybe a year before China produces the same thing. As was suggested, selling the patent may be the best compromise. Just my opinion.
 
Last edited:
kb58 - fair point. I guess I am hoping a big name knife company will be interested. Granted, tons of knives come out of China, however, many people still go for a brand name when looking for a good folding knife.
 
We had two attorney's, one was a patent attorney, the other was experienced in IP Licensing. Yours may be skilled in both or not. Either way, they are expensive. They bill generally on 20 minute intervals, so if you call for 2 minutes you are billed for 20. I got to know our attorney's very well so it was not unusual for us to ask how each other was doing and what was happening. When that conversation started, by first words out of my mouth was, "Are we on the clock?".

With regards to China, that is another reason to look to sell you patent. If you lease it, you are responsible to protect it and not doing so, could place you in a law suite as you leased on the basis it was protected.
 
Papa Charlie said:
We had two attorney's, one was a patent attorney, the other was experienced in IP Licensing. Yours may be skilled in both or not. Either way, they are expensive. They bill generally on 20 minute intervals, so if you call for 2 minutes you are billed for 20. I got to know our attorney's very well so it was not unusual for us to ask how each other was doing and what was happening. When that conversation started, by first words out of my mouth was, "Are we on the clock?".
Click to expand...
I get that. For step one I am on a flat fee. I do see the hourly rate for the next steps though. I am sure I will be asking that same question. What the heck sometimes you have to go for it a little!!
 
When I bought my old company (Heartbeat Power) it came with a number of unique designs for racing go karts and engines. I asked the seller if he had patented any of them and he explained his logic which makes great sense to me.

Mike didn't bother with patenting anything because all a patent does is give you the right to sue someone who copies your design. You have to find them, hire a lawyer, go to court and wait to get a cease and desist order to enforce your patent if they don't want to play fair. All the while they are making money on your design which you have provided detailed drawings for via the patent office. If you are small and they are big you don't have much chance of being successful in any meaningful time-frame.

What Mike did was to always have the "new and improved" design ready before he started making the original. That way when people started copying him (and they always did), he could release the new one and crush the competition. Money that would have been spent on lawyers and patent applications instead went into product design, production, and advertising.

Unless you're going to make knives yourself I know this doesn't help much, but the chances of getting even your lawyer bills covered are probably pretty low. The patent office is full of better ways to do things which are never sold because the companies in business already have no interest in changing what they are doing. If you do have a good idea large conglomerates have plenty of lawyers and offshore affiliates which can easily flood the market before you even have a chance to get them into court. If you love inventing things it may not always follow that you'll love the legal process of protecting your invention. There are plenty of stories of inventors who went mad trying to get paid for their work from corporations that stole their ideas, heck you could probably make a pretty good movie night just watching a few that have made it to the big screen.

So, I really do wish you the best in getting your design out there and making money from it. But be clear about your intent, if you have a better mousetrap and want to see it in use consider releasing it as an open source or copyleft design.

What is Copyleft? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

www.gnu.org www.gnu.org

You may have more success getting contributions or consulting fees from small knife makers than licensing to a single large manufacturer that may pay your fee to just keep their competition from using it. Just because you find someone who will pay you does not mean they will ever use what they pay for, stories of companies buying patents just to keep them off the market are legion.

We're at an interesting place with small knife manufacturers and hobbyists doing some really cool stuff. If what you have is truly revolutionary you might have far more satisfaction seeing what they do with your ideas than you'll ever get from giving it to one of the big guys....

JMHO,


John
 
I would concur with mathewsx. The company I worked for was big on patents in both the research and machine building areas. For many years engineers and research scientists lived and died by the number of patents they could secure for the company. Somewhere along the way the competition realized that all they needed to do to avoid litigation was to change the mechanisms or formulas just slightly to avoid patent infringement.

Machines and products similar, but not identical to our designs began appearing on the market. It was obvious they had gone to the patent office and secured copies of the drawings and finished products. 95+% of the research and design of their machinery was so close to ours there were even instances where parts could be interchanged. However they were smart enough to make them just enough different to avoid law suits.

The company spent millions of dollars fighting patent infringements, and in most cases ended up the winners. Winners in this case was a relative term in that although the competition could no longer produce or sell the machines, we had spent more money than those machines could generate defending the patent rights. In the end we resorted to secrecy and documentation to prevent intellectual property theft. Anyone allowed near any of the proprietary machinery or products was required to sign a personal NDA. The documents were designed and worded on a personal level to make it be known any if any information was released the person would be liable on a personal level, not the company they worked for. It had a pretty chilling effect on those interested in corporate espionage. I am only aware of one incident where someone was personally sued. Our company won and the individual was faced with prison time and a huge financial liability.
 
I'm a fan of folding knives, to the point that I wouldn't want my wife to know how far in I am. I have a Gerstner chest full of quality folders. It seems to me that designing a series of knives based on your mechanism and selling it to somebody like Kershaw/KAI would be the best way to secure control of your design. That might be hard, since opening mechanisms are the platform on which companies like Benchmade (Axis lock), Kershaw (spring assist flippers) base their whole product lines on. There are others, like Boker and CRKT, who embrace diversity in their lines, but they are entirely overseas businesses. Maybe you can fly to Hawaii with a burlap sack and some rope and drag Ken Onion into an empty hotel room with the blinds drawn, and explain to him why he should do a series based on your design. Or you can do like Chris Reeves, and keep it small, build in-house, but charge a bundle. Yep, interesting topic!
 
John and projectnut, thanks for weighing in. I see the logic in not getting a patent, and have considered someone could offer to buy it and never use it.

I guess I am thinking along the lines of pontiac428 and thinking someone will want it. The knife industry claims to be innovative and patent for Benchmade’s Axis lock just ended and SOG is already copying it. I would think a company like that would want an new innovative idea to seperate from others?

As I said earlier I guess only time will tell. A gamble for sure, seems good arguments for both paths forward.
 
I would make sure your design is actually Unique. A Member of the American Knifemaker's Guild (Woody Nafaih) did a lot of very innovative designs with folders, and patented them. My favorite of his was an adjustable spring folder, which allowed you to tune the spring for ease of opening or for more substantial "walk and talk". He did sell his design to one of the major Knife Companies (I can't remember which).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top