When to Submit for a Brutally Honest Review

Inventors regularly ask us about how developed their invention should be when submitting for a Brutally Honest Review (BHR):

• Do I need to have a provisional patent application (PPA) filed?
  No. Submissions are covered by our Confidentiality Agreement. A Confidentiality Agreement can be enforced; a PPA can not be.
• Do I need a prototype?
  No. We love prototypes. But they can be expensive. One reason for the BHR is to determine if the expense of a prototype is justified.
• It's just an idea, is that ok?
  YES! It's great to get professional feedback (and a possible deal offer) at the earliest possible stage.
• It's already patented and being manufactured. Does a BHR still make sense?
  Yes. IF you can handle possibly negative feedback on something that you've likely spent years and tens of thousands of dollars on. We always try to find a positive path forward. But sometimes we don't see one and that's hard to hear
  

The BHR is useful to the inventor at an early stage. It provides a third party perspective and a dose of reality, along with suggestions for next steps. There's a chance of a deal offer.

The odds of us offering a deal rise as an invention is more developed. The more cost the inventor absorbs in development, the more proof offered that there is a strong and profitable market, the lower the risk for us and the more likely we'll say yes. OTOH, an undeveloped truly brilliant idea is more interesting to us than a fully developed idea that is merely good.

What gets a "yes"? Something that looks like it'll either be easy but maybe not big money, or something with a BIG potential payoff and reasonable investment risk. Invention ideas that use well established manufacturing and app technologies and concepts are far easier to say yes to then things that are at the leading edge. Something that's been proven in a lab but not implemented commercially is very hard for us to say "yes" to (but not necessarily impossible). Things that violate the laws of physics, like conservation of energy, are an automatic no.

We don't negotiate our Confidentiality Agreement (aka NDA) at the submission stage. We receive thousands of submissions and inquiries a year and we can't afford to negotiate and track different NDAs for each one.

We look forward to the possibility of working with you.

Get started with a Brutally Honest Review here.