Ok, here is a question for all you business gurus.
We all love digital cameras but we are still pre-occupied to have an ‘album’ and thus we print all our pictures. So, I was thinking of inventing a hand held digital album. Nice and slick, like the new mp3 players but with the sole purpose to hold pictures. It will have two models, one with a touch screen and the other with buttons. A small fee for an upgrade would let you play movies and give you more space to store your pictures.
Now, I don’t have the resources or the know how to build & then manufacture something like this. Can I still patent my ‘digital album’ idea? If so, how?
Pacific Digital Corporation has introduced the PV1 Digital Photo Album, MP3 music player and Video player. The PV1 sports a high resolution, bright 5.6” TFT screen that displays digital photos and video clips in vivid color. Set up a slide show and play directly from a memory card. The units capacity is only limited by the memory size of the memory card being used.
^ copetition never hurt anyone AJ. Don't get discouraged, do a prior art search on the technology that you want to patent. it will cost you little money and can maybe even give you ideas on how to change and/or improve design through another route
Its a little complicated AJ… but traditionally, in their purest sense, the laws of intellectual property have held that you can’t patent or copyright an idea per se but only the particular implementation of an idea. In practice though, patent lawyers always attempt to file in a way that generalizes the implementation to the point where any practical use of the idea is covered by the patent - and this is tantamount to patenting the idea in itself.
That being said, if you were to come up with some design illustrations on paper - e.g. process diagrams and design specifics to go along with your “idea”, this will be easier to patent.
shoo now… make us a virtual toilet.