Inventions :: Patents, production, exposure, etc?

[Adam G]

I'm not going to make a big deal about this and I hope no one else does. I'm not looking to become a millionaire off of this or anything, though it would be nice.
I have an idea for an invention or rather, a product. The beauty of this is that there is really no designing it or testing it.
Without giving too much away...
It would simply be a piece of bent plastic. Nothing really special about it, maybe multiple colors, shapes, materials, etc. but it wouldn't be very complicated.
The size of it would be extremely small. As in, hundreds or thousands per sheet of plastic. 1/16 or 1/32 would probably do the job, as well.
As you can see, the supplies for it aren't spectacular or hard to come by.
Question, for something like this, would it be better to, in a way, "vac form" something of this nature? A machine that makes the necessary cuts and then forms the shape?

As for patenting this idea, I know nothing about patents. I'm only 15 and have no experience in this kind of thing. Any advice for me?

Production for this item, as stated above, possibly a home-made machine that makes them? That seems like the only possibility. How would I package this item? I'm thinking something along the lines of a piece of cardboard with information and pretty colors and pictures, the product set in the middle and then "wrapped" in plastic. (You know, that plastic they use to wrap certain things, ex. a Styrofoam ball like the one sitting in my room that is heat sealed/shrunk for a fit.)

As for exposure, a website is obviously where I would start but, if it got serious enough, I would like to purchase air-time for this product. Any idea how to go about this, if I was to do so?


This is all theoretical. I have some money I could spend to do this, but it's sort of the money I'm saving to pay for college (My parents aren't planning on helping me pay). I might be able to make some money on eBay selling some programs when I code some good ones, but that's a long shot.

Thanks for reading, Adam.

[myersn024]

Patents are quite a bit different than copyrights, and cost a lot of money. The first thing that you do should be to make sure that no one has patented a similar item meant for the same purpose. With patents, it doesn't matter whether or not you've created something that you thought of yourself. If someone else has done it, regardless of how or why, then you're beat. However, if no one else has ever patented the item that you've thought of, it would be in your best interest to file for a patent based on some technical documents describing what your item is, how its used, and what it's made of along with some technical drawings of your design. Once that's done, then you could move on to production and file amendments to your patent if something changes. I know that it sounds a little like putting the cart before the horse, but that's the way that it's usually done.

[Adam G]

I assumed that it would be best to secure the patent as early as possible, whether or not I would get around to production and sales is another question. I'll think on this for a few days, weeks, months, etc. and see how everything goes. Thanks for the quick reply.