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Design & Innovation Lab
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions
General
We are inventors too! So, we’ve definitely been there.
We would be happy to speak with you about your invention. As a first step, simply give us a call or complete one of our contact forms. If you’d like to share any details about your invention – don’t worry. We have a mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) that will protect your idea and allow you to have a productive discussion about possible next steps.
In general, the process of preparing a new idea or invention for commercialization is straight-forward. But – as you may have already guessed – there are a number of things you may need to do to protect yourself and set off on the right foot. We have the experience to be your guide in this exciting journey. At the very least we can certainly suggest some useful guard rails to help keep you on the road to success!
We usually have multiple projects underway on behalf of ourselves and our clients, and some projects are made available as third-party investment opportunities.
Please check the Active Projects our Projects page for candidate products that might be a great fit for your portfolio. If you see something interesting, feel free to reach out to us directly via our Contact page.(https://www.hannaenterprise.com/contact)
Short answer: Patents take time, so it’s best plan for a multi-year process.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office typically receives over 600,000 patent applications every calendar year. So, as you can imagine, there’s a significant backlog and wait time for any individual filing to receive attention.
If you have a new idea that you would like to protect, pursuing a U.S. patent is still a good idea – even in the current climate, which is rife with potential overseas copycats. A U.S. patent will secure your intellectual property for a time, enabling you to expose your invention without risk to potential buyers and manufacturers in the U.S.
We understand that the thought of pursing a patent may seem daunting. So, here are a few ideas that might help you:
(1) You can work with us at Hanna Enterprise, and we’ll do all the legwork for you. We work directly with a number of qualified U.S. patent attorneys. We can put you in direct communication with a patent attorney who is a good fit for your project, and we can also provide assistance to you as your patent journey unfolds.
(2) As a first step, you may wish to consider filing for a Provisional Patent, even though a provisional patent application is not an actual patent. A provisional patent application is a low-cost and fast way to gain protection for your invention for up to 12 months. It can give you the time you need to test and perfect your concept prior to filing for a full patent – and it provides you with “Patent Pending” status, which may help protect you when exposing your idea to others. Later, if you choose to move to applying for a full patent and it is granted, your invention’s filing date will be back-recorded to the original filing date of your Provisional Patent. Nice! Please note that we would also advise you to work with a qualified patent attorney for filing a Provisional Patent. And we are happy to help you with this.
There is no definitive answer for this, but we can tell you from experience that it’s definitely a journey.
Companies can, of course, develop new products and bring them to market quite quickly. But the same is not true for individuals. If you are an individual inventor, it will take time to test and perfect your concept prior to exposing it to the market (meaning manufacturers or end-customers). In parallel, you may be pursuing patent protection – and that takes time as well.
Here at Hanna Enterprise, we have been through this process many times, so here are a few rough examples: The fastest idea-to-market idea that we’ve ever developed took about 14 months. This was a relatively simple (design-wise) consumer product, with a development budget that was co-funded by the eventual buyer – a small company that outsourced their product R&D to us. More complex products typically take 2-3 years from concept to handover, assuming patent protections are involved.
We do not. We are only equipped to build small (sample volume) batches of refined prototypes. That said, we do work with a number of trusted low-volume manufacturers. We would be happy to connect you with a manufacturer that is a good fit for your project, and also help you navigate the waters to preserve your ownership. As you may have already guessed or experienced, there are some unscrupulous entities out there that can run away with your ideas (and your profits) if you do not engage with them correctly.
Our mission is to enable individual and small business inventors to profit from their creativity. We also develop our own inventions – meaning: sometimes we are actually our own customer. We begin at the “idea” or “concept” stage, and then rigorously develop, test and protect concepts so that they can be disclosed with confidence to prospective buyers as ready-for-commercialization products.
We have a proven track record of success – working with individuals and companies – to bring new ideas to life.
We work as a consulting services provider, and we do not demand royalty cuts or insist on leaving strings attached on completed projects. Success for us is when you can achieve measurable success from your inventions.
Let’s work together to convert your creativity into a nice income stream for you!
Feel free to reach out to us directly via our Contact page.(https://www.hannaenterprise.com/contact)
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