Owen Baser is at an age when most people are enjoying retirement.
At 75, Baser is just getting started in his career as an inventor. He’s selling what he says is the first new type of door handle in more than 200 years – a design for those with physical difficulties. the Baser Door Handle is a low profile push-pull door handle that protects walls from damage, is remarkably easy to open and install, yet is elegant, unique, and very functional.
That follows a trend among inventors in the past two years – a focus on safety-oriented, medical, computer technology and environmentally friendly innovations.
Baser, from Sacramento, Calif., was one of about 150 inventors at a recent U.S. patents conference, part of a wider outreach effort led by John Calvert, administrator of the patent office’s Inventors Assistance Program and a former examiner. The office is educating inventors through clubs, universities and high schools, to offer guidance on how to navigate the application process.
The complexity of applying for a patent is just one of the many obstacles inventors face. Baser’s door handle and other ideas innovative enough to earn a patent can be the result of years, even decades, of tinkering, testing and worrying.
Among the problems some of the inventors face: How to design a manufacturing process from scratch, how to enter a market to compete with a multibillion-dollar corporation or how best to get legal protection for their invention.
“A successful inventor – the ingenuity and knowledge base is almost secondary. The most common trait of an inventor is perseverance,� Dollinger said. “They don’t give up. They may not have hit big in the marketplace but they expect to.�
To their benefit, inventors tend to see these issues less as problems and more as puzzles.
Photo by MSDesigns.
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