What can you do if you have built a working prototype of a great invention idea but have very limited funds?

You can’t trust anyone until you get it copyrighted. Until then, guard the idea – or whatever you have already built – with your life.

What are you interested in doing with it? You can either pitch the idea to people who will buy it from you – and also get a percentage of every single piece sold (after it’s copyrighted), even after you sell it. Or you have the option of trying to get a loan to get your idea off the ground and paying for everything yourself – that way you get 100% of what sells. The only risky thing about the latter is possible debt. If your idea doesn’t sell, you have (depending on how much it would cost to actually produce and build your ideas) a huge loan to pay off anyway.

This is the classic conundrum for web people. Someone has the idea for a site bigger then Facebook. And they will give me half.

By now I have learned to tell them to “Fuck Off”

If you’re in Britain, Dragon’s Den is always a good bet. :) In all seriousness though, just keep your idea very very close and research as much as you can; it’s like trying to find the right publisher for your book; just keep trying.

You can pitch your prototype to a well formed company who you think could benefit from your invention. If they like it, they’ll invest in the product. However, they’ll probably want anywhere from 30–50 percent of the profit.. or if you get a patent on the product right now, they’ll buy the patent from you…. OR you can say that’s not an option and you can continue to receive profit from the product, but I believe that companies are very competitive about this stuff especially when it means throwing a lot of money into a theoretical pool just because they have a hunch the product will sell. Hopefully that’s not too confusing.

No it’s not hopeless. You got to focus, you seem a bit meek. If you have something of value what do you do, protect it. And there are set rules for protecting different things but the overall principles are the same. Protect your idea, but you may ask “how can I protect and promote at the same time” By knowing as much about your source as possible. I hope you have a good idea, otherwise Im wasting my time. Hmmm you mention money like its a big hinderence, true, if you could back your own idea you could maintain close to sole ownership of this device. But you dont have money. So this is what you got to do, get options. There is an ad on tv about inventions, they offer to help in the entire process of marketing your item. Then there are venture capital firms, dont know anything about that, but if you can wow someone with money to invest, that might be a good thing. Your gonna get fucked, you just got to find the guy who’s got the lube. Hope you got something there, and you end up making a little scratch with that doo-hickey.

At least in the US, such intellectual property for a physical device would likely be covered under Patents rather than copyrights. A patent attorney would seem to be a good starting place to protect your interests. Then you could promote your ideas with a greater sense of confidence that your property remains your property.

yes, a patent atty will know what to do. I bet that’s what Ron Popeil did before he was bigtime

@Kayak8 Is right. I meant patent – not copyright.

Appreciate the responses. I was hoping I would of have found the needle in the haysack when I decided to ask this question out of desperation that someone would of had some actual experience doing this.

Again it comes down to money (which I do not have) and/or trust in other persons/idea submission companies (which I do not have either). Maybe I will just build a bigger prototype of my alternator to power my own house and leave it at that. If I was a celebrity I could hire other people to do all the work for me while calling myself an inventor.

prolly most people with their first great invention were broke or next to it. Maybe when they get their first idea to production and get some cash flow the next invention will be easier.

@woodcutter Yeah I don’t want to be another Tesla. He was a brilliant scientist and inventor but he was a lousy businessman. This sounds similar to me, I’m great with technical stuff but lousy with the business/law end of everything.

You can file your own patent. You don’t need an attorney, but it would help with some of the details. The US patent office has a section on their website for inventors. Essentially, you have to provide a comprehensive explanation of the thing and draw a sketch of it from different angles. The website also has a place where you can search for patents. Look up a few in your industry to get the format and type of details people include on their patents.

@Kayak8 I did manage to do my own patent search online. I even came close to having an invention submission company look at my schemtatics for the circuitry in the prototype. The company charged me a small fee for the patent search they did for similar related devices (they do not have my idea) but after that I backed out and didn’t go along with the rest of the procedure they wanted me to do.

I will have to try to save more money however so I can eventually hire a patent attorney and do all this other stuff.

Just for the record they aren’t “perpetual motion” devices but they are very power efficient.