Patent Attorney and Founder
Hi, I’m J.D. Houvener, and welcome to the Bold Today Show where you, the entrepreneur, business owner, or inventor get your daily inspiration on how to make the world a better place.
It’s a makerspace, and it’s pretty awesome, as you can tell. They’ve got drills, machines, electronic gadgets, and even CNC machines. Today’s challenge for you, I’m calling it the ten-minute challenge. This is something that’s gonna take you out of your box a little bit. In today’s world, where we’re just itching to get to the next thing, you know, we’re so impulsive and impatient, this challenge is for you to take ten whole minutes. No, doesn’t sound like that long, but ten minutes, that’s it. And focus on one thing. That’s your challenge for today. So by tomorrow when you’re watching the Bold Today Show, I want you to put down in the comments what it is you did for ten minutes. You’ve got to put the phone away, you’ve got to stop all the alerts and emails and distractions, and make sure you’re focusing on just one thing. You’ll be surprised at how much difference it’s gonna make and how productive you might be.
So today’s invention of the day was put out by Robert Klein out of Pennsylvania. It was just issued January 2018, so this brand new pad I wanted to bring to your attention, and we’re hopefully gonna put it up on the screen right here. It’s not that crazy and innovative, it doesn’t have all the electronic bells and whistles, it’s a garden rake. So you see the patent number below right here, almost at ten million. Now, this is not that revolutionary, and the goal of this, let me share it with you, is hope you understand that the inventions that get patented don’t have to be all that earth-shattering. They’re improvements on the prior art, they’re making subtle steps forward, improving the technology, and that technology can be as simple as a garden rake. How interesting, right?
So the related law of the day is simple. We’re gonna talk about what it means to get a patent, what do you need, what are the requirements. There are three. It must be novel, new. Novel is just a fancy word for something must be new, and it must be new worldwide after the American Invents Act was passed in 2013. In order for a patent to be granted, it has to be the first of its kind, not just in the country but in the whole world. The second requirement is non-obviousness. It’s a long word, but it means that based on all of the disclosures on the internet and in the subject matter all around the world, it can’t be an obvious iteration or improvement from the current technology. Third, it has to have present-day utility. That’s a pretty low bar, but as long as you’re able to show that you’re moving your invention and can practice the invention today, you meet the requirements: novelty, non-obviousness, and utility. Those are the requirements for getting a utility patent in the US.
I want you to think about what you could do with that ten minutes, and I challenge you to dare one of your friends and bring them to this forum. Share this podcast, share the video with them, and see if they’re up to the challenge of just taking ten minutes out of your 24-hour day and doing just one thing. It’s a powerful ten minutes, and I look forward to hearing your comments below. So again, thanks for listening and being a part of the Bold Today Show. I’m your host, J.D. Houvener Be bold today.