I have a brilliant business idea, what now?

[Mox]

Reading through the above it could be that you have not yet done or been advised to do a Patent Search.I think that this is the first thing you should do to see if your idea already exists as a patent.

www.google.com/patents or http://patft,uspto.gov/ are both good sites which may reveal that your idea has already been patented or prior art exists.

Reading one of the similar existing registered patents reveals a lot as to what you need to think about when putting your own one together.

[johnwarner75]

If you really want to go down the rout of trademarking and patents then have a chat with a lawyer (then usually give you 30 mins free to discuss such things)

It can be a big waste of money

[adrianh]

88agents dude - That checkered advertising box on your front page is horrible. I tried to read one of the ads but by the time I got halfway the thing started changing. The picture looks like 2 puzzles thrown together 99% of the time, then fo a split second it makes sense only to develop serious ADD again!

Another thing is that I can't figure out what you do by looking at your convoluted front page - for that matter, what exactly do you do?

[Geoff Hindmarch]

SHOULD I GET A PATENT?
We all know that most inventors know very little about patents, and this is one of the most common questions.
In most cases it is not worth getting. It will cost you an arm and a leg, take considerable time (SA had a backlog of 4 years in 2005) and probably by the time you get it, it has been improved, copied or stolen.
And what happens if you do get a patent and someone copies it? You have to take legal action that will also cost you an arm and a leg, also take considerable time to get to court, and even if you win the case you still have to get your costs back from the guilty party – and they could be on their way to liquidation or offer you R100 a month.
Internationally it is even worse. You can look at $100 000 for the patents, but the costs of suing internationally will cost you that and more. There are many countries that ignore patents all together (there are 350 Companies in China alone that manufacture identical patented PING golf clubs) and when you go for legal action they just close down and open up elsewhere.
Only when you make the big-time is it worth looking at patents.
The best thing in my opinion is to get into the market as fast as you can and review things once you have got going.

[Geoff Hindmarch]

Try again when you finish school and you should be able to converse nicely

[adrianh]

Hmmm...Ok, I'll do that, but while I'm busy with grade 5 please bear with me.

Be that all as it may, it doesn't change the fact that I dislike that checkered ad, that I think the page is convoluted and that I can't figure out by reading the front page what it is that you do.

Could you please explain what it is that your company does?

[AnthonyVZ]

It sounds as if your idea is a "business method", which is not "per se" patentable in South Africa and in most other countries (excluding the US). Also, remember that once your information is public, any obligations that recipients have accepted under NDAs are no longer enforceable.

[clugey]

My advise - don't spend too much time worrying about how to protect your idea. Worry about how you are going to get to market first and how you are going to operationalise your idea better than anyone else can. microsoft didn't invent the computer not did Apple the cellphone - just did it better.

[BusFact]

Well said clugey