You Have an Idea for an Invention ... Now What?

Thomas Alva Edison, best known for inventing the light bulb, famously said that "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."

Almost all great inventors have had this one thing in common: They're fanatical about capturing their ideas before they're forgotten. Whether sketching them down on paper, writing out descriptions or speaking into a voice recorder, the most prolific creators know the first step is to get that idea logged somewhere they can re-visit it. From there, they meticulously record the outcomes of experiments and take lots of notes on their work -- further stimulating new ideas.

Copious note-taking also affords the inventor some legal protection in case of a dispute over who thought of an idea first [source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology].

A sense of urgency also helps. Often with inventions, especially new technologies, several people around the world will independently come up with the same idea simultaneously. So it's just a matter of who gets to their country's patent office first. Radio, for instance, can claim several "fathers," including Nikola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi and others who simultaneously raced to develop radio as we know it today. But it was Marconi, who through speed and powerful business connections received the U.S. patent for inventing radio -- along with the Nobel Prize in 1911 [source: New Voyage Communications/PBS].

So should you file for a patent, trademark or copyright? Well, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:

With your invention conceived, protected by the law from being poached and perhaps already built, how do you go about getting it out to the public? And getting a nice payday?

So there it is: Your invention, your baby, which has gone from idea to sketch to fully functioning prototype. All you need now is someone to manufacture it on a large scale and to sell it -- so that you can be rewarded for your genius.

OK, here's where the real work begins.

At this point, you'll have to convince someone to invest in your invention further, in order to pay for manufacturing costs, marketing and distribution before it starts making a profit in the marketplace.

Alternatively, you can sell your idea outright and let the new owner worry about the above-mentioned heavy lifting. You can sell directly to a company in the industry that your product serves, or you can even sell to an independent firm that specifically buys inventions.

Also, don't forget that you can license your invention. In other words, you can give a company the right to use your invention's technology for a limited time. Licensing allows you to make money from your invention not just from one sale, but over and over from as many licensing deals as you can strike.

Just realize that if you manage to sell your invention that alone doesn't guarantee its success. But to increase its odds, make sure that whatever it is you invent fills an unmet need by a specific customer group. Successful inventions solve real-life problems that people have.

To get your invention to market, you'll definitely need lots of help -- from intellectual property attorneys to experts on marketing, perhaps even from technology experts to make your product better. A note of caution: Beware of scammers, who seem to be drawn to preying on idealistic inventors while claiming to help. Fortunately, there's no shortage of resources on navigating the twisty road to bringing an invention to market. In fact, here are a few you might find helpful to investigate:

For more information about inventions and other related topics, follow the links on the next page.