Thanks Jim for the sound advice.
Well, sound or not - I'm glad it's being taken in the spirit offered
I could design it in such a way that no one manufacturer made the entire unit, and I would assemble it, (for starters)
separating the manufacturing isn't necessarily going to be great protection - helpful, possibly.
While just direct manufacture (and some of that may be controllable contractually, you prob won't have much pull and some of the emerging manufacturing nations have a lot of corporate defectorship that causes design crosstalk) is a pretty blantant one
If the other parts are relatively standard (which ould keep costs lower) or are trivial in their manufacture - the manu could undercut you (they are in the manu biz after all)
If I held a patent, the idea could still be copied and manufactured with a different design, is this true?
Well, yes and no
yes, for a crappy patent
a quick technical distinction
patents do not protect ideas, they protect inventions (which has to be more than an idea..it has to be "enabled" - it has to have the operating principles sussed out)
Likewise, a good patent does not just protect a single specific design (there are design patents, but that's a different beast if you are talking about something useful as opposed to ornamental).
A patent is meant to cover the "invention" - basically what is the new "cool thing about it" and express that in the general (so that various ways of implementing the invention are also covered)
Now, that's where it can get tricky - to make sure you are writing the app suitably abstract to give your coverage breadth, but to make your invention clear and solid
Often, the engineering team will tend to be thinking about the engineering and OVERspecifiy (b/c they are working on the development - essentially an EMBODIMENT of the invention. So they see it in those terms). So there's often times a back and forth with someone working on the patent side to get it. generalized to what the invention is.
[it's sort of like the Platonic ideals]
now, if patent is written too closely to one specific design - then, yeah design around is much more likely. If the patent s written to be suitably broad, then design around becomes much much harder
When looking at patents, you'll see all the various parts (abstract, background, drawings, etc) all that good stuff is to support the claims section. The claims are really where you spell out what you say your invention actually is.
That's not to say the spec isn't important (it's used to clarify what the claims are talking about and if there is a question about the claims then the spec may wind up putting a spin on the claims).
so, when you look at a patent and see one of the figures - don't just go "oh, mine doesn't look anything like that" or "oh use a chain instead of gears" -- the patent may cover that as well
I would not stop my business to develop a product, I would do it concurrently. If it took off, I'd reevaluate.
My concern there isn't so much you dropping your job for this (though that is often the motivation -- the dream moving the project forward for small inventors), but that, being emotionally invested in the possibilities can skew the numbers optimistically "oh, getting a manufacturing contract won't be too tough, there's definitely a market for this, once I get my foot in the door I'll have some cache as the original, it'll only take x years to get steam" -- or whatever
I mean since you are looking at ROI and are cost sensitive, I just want to mention that so you can remember to assess the risks and costs honestly
FWIW - even for large entities this can happen --some teams like marketing and upper management can get excited and optimistic then control operations like QA, can take it in the booty - "why do you want us to fail?!?"
It's sort of similar to the "an atty who represents himself has a fool for a client"
) - there can be sliding scales, some firms even have the the attys to do a couple of pro-bono apps a year for small entities.