Entrepreneur.com: You’ve been inventing since you were 12 and have what is reported to be 15 to 18 inventions in the average American’s home. What qualities does an invention need to have to have in order to make it into the market and into people’s homes?Doug Hall: The first thing is the invention has to solve a real problem and ideally solve it in a very unique way. In other words, [the inventor is] bringing something really dramatically different to the market.
The second thing you have to do is make sure it’s manufacturable at a reasonable price. You can create solutions, but if [your invention is] more expensive than products similar to it, it’s not worth it.
The third thing is that in an ideal world for an inventor, [the invention] has to be protectable, which means have a utility patent–not a design patent, but a broad-claiming utility patent. Design patents are relatively meaningless when it come to licensing an invention.
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