Serendipitous failures……..At first the two words don’t seem to be natural partners. But in the history of inventions, they occasionally play together quite nicely.
As we gather on March 6 to celebrate the 72nd birthday of the invention of Silly Putty, I’m reminded of how sometimes when things go wrong, they can actually be going extremely right. I’m also reminded that all too often inventors end up not enjoying the fruits of their creativity…or in this case their serendipitous failures.
Not rubber
General Electric engineer James Wright was working on a synthetic replacement for rubber during the WWII war effort. He formulated what we now call Silly Putty and knew he had something interesting, but it certainly wasn’t a substitute for rubber.
He dropped the ball—excuse the pun—and eventually the goo ended up in the hands—pardon me again—of toy store owner Ruth Fallgatter. Advertising consultant Peter Hodgson convinced her to put it in her catalog, but even after becoming a bestseller, she took it out the following year.
It was Hodgson who truly appreciated what he had in that little squishy, stretchy, bouncy—dare we say silly?—compound. He went a bit deeper in debt, had some Yale students put one-ounce globs in little plastic eggs and started to market it.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The rise of scammers
In our tale there aren’t any bad guys, just some folks who missed an opportunity, or for whom the timing wasn’t quite right. Today, however, something of a cottage industry has grown up around scamming inventors out of their money, if not their inventions.
If I had the time to do the research, I could probably write a five-volume series of books about all the legal wrangling that is going on right now in the world of software patents. What seem to be entire shell companies are set up to do nothing but sue would-be software patent holders.
This American Life did a great broadcast on the issue. It would be funny if it weren’t true. Patenting software, by the way, is a pretty difficult thing to achieve and the law surrounding it is quite treacherous to navigate. If you have a great idea for software, may God be with you.
Watch your checkbook
For the patenting of typical inventions—the kinds of things you can draw up and build with your hands—there are all kinds of “invention promotion” companies vying for your business. These groups say they will review your idea, research the applicable patents and even contact manufacturers.
The FTC is highly critical of these companies. You must know that very few patents have commercial value to begin with, so even when an invention promotion company does what it says it will do, the odds of commercial success are very low. However, there are fraudulent companies that ask for as much as $5,000 to $10,000 up front and then provide few, if any services. Reputable licensing agents do not ask for big fees in advance, according to the FTC.
If you’ve had your own serendipitous failure or stroke of genius, you might want to start your journey by checking out Google’s patent search. Search terms similar to your idea and see how original your brainstorm is. If it looks like you’re onto something, then it may be time to find a respected patent attorney in your area.
