Many inventors are hesitant to file for a patent for their inventions/ideas thinking that their inventions are not a big deal, are obvious once you see them, or are not complicated and anyone could come up with the idea. But sometimes the simplest ideas are very patentable and can be easily manufactured.
Early in my career I worked for a large law firm that represented a woman named Susan who was employed as a shoe buyer for a large department store chain. She recognized that the then current method of packaging the shoes for sale in their stores used a small elastic band that tied the pair of shoes together when they were displayed on shelves. The problem with this long-time method was that the band was inserted through the sidewalls of the shoes and left tiny holes. While this was the industry standard, Susan believed that it reduced the value of the shoes purchased from their stores.
Her invention, see below, was to create a new method of tying the pair of shoes together.
This invention immediately seems obvious once anyone sees how it operates, but no one had patented this or a similar idea in spite of the damage the existing method left on the shoes. Her employer did not wish to patent the idea but granted her permission to do so as long as she gave them a perpetual license to use the invention.
Susan contacted the law firm and a lawyer prepared and filed a patent application for her. It ultimately was issued as U.S. Patent 4,624,060. While it was pending before the USPTO, her employer ordered shoes to be manufactured overseas that included the above tab located within the shoe and started to sell their shoes with Susan’s invention. The overseas manufacturers thought it was a great idea and offered it to their other customers who sold shoes through all of the other discount department stores in the U.S. Susan’s tabs quickly became how shoes were packaged across the country.
Shortly thereafter, the ‘060 patent issued, and Susan began writing letters to all of the department stores offering them a license to her patent. After some effort and at least one lawsuit, Susan retired from the shoe buying business and moved from a modest home in the suburbs to a large home on a lake. She also became a snowbird second homeowner to avoid the winters in her hometown.
Susan’s patent is for a small tab of material that doesn’t interfere with wearing the shoes and that does little to raise the cost of manufacturing while increasing the value of the shoes to the buyers. Millions of shoes are sold each year at department stores. Imagine how many pairs will be sold during the life of the patent. Susan received a life-changing amount of money from a very small royalty on each pair of shoes sold. Her relatively simple idea, though, didn’t happen until she came up with it and started the process to patent it.
Susan had a great idea, and the circumstances were just right for her tabs to be adopted for use in the industry. More importantly, she had the foresight to talk to a knowledgeable lawyer about protecting her idea and the tenacity to follow-through with department stores to get licenses from them.
When you come up with a new idea or an improvement on an existing idea, many registered patent attorneys will give you a free call to discuss whether a patent is viable and possibly worthwhile. Call us at Gregson IP Law, or any local patent attorney of your choosing, before someone else patents your idea. Patents are based on the first to file an application, so don’t wait.
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