Banking on innovations

WASHINGTON -- Her dog grooming customers were ecstatic, but Angie Porter's hand was killing her. She was using the blade from her clippers to pull away loose hair and undercoat, but the makeshift tool was awkward and uncomfortable to use.

Her husband fashioned a new device with a handle from a hairbrush, and the Furminator was born. Even before patenting the invention last month, Porter had already sold about 6,000 of the tools to groomers and veterinarians. The QVC shopping channel has just started selling the tool, and Porter predicts she is about to hit the big time.

"People love their pet, but they hate the shedding," said Porter, 36. Her St. Louis salon charges double for a "shedless" treatment with the Furminator. "I knew if people were willing to pay double the price for the treatment, this tool had to be worth patenting," she said.

For more than 200 years, the United States has granted patents, or property rights, that exclude anyone else from making, selling, using or importing someone's invention. The first patent was for potash, a fertilizer ingredient.

Thousands of patents will be issued this year by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. They range from offbeat gadgets thought up by independent inventors to highly technical processes developed by teams of corporate engineers. Most cover how something works, although patents also apply to a product's design and even to plants.

Today's inventors are mostly improving on existing ideas rather than pioneering new ones. Charles Jones of Greensburg, Kan., recently patented a fishing float that, unlike traditional bobbers, slips up and down the line. The goal is to leave less line behind.

It all started with a duck, "a big old mallard duck," that Jones felt sorry for. The duck was tangled in fishing line at Kiowa State Fishing Lake near Jones' home, and after Jones cut it loose and watched it fly away, he decided to try to make a float that would bring a hook and weight up over obstructions, so it wouldn't snap and leave yards of line behind.

"I'm pretty soft-hearted; when I saw that clip-on float attached to that mallard duck, that's when I started to make something," said Jones, who is 55 and disabled.

Now, he has found investors, formed a corporation and secured the town's old VFW building, and in about three months, he'll be manufacturing the floats.

Inventors in Jones' state filed 807 patent applications last year; 510 patents were issued to Kansans. In Missouri, the numbers were 1,404 applications filed and 937 granted.

Not all patents bring success.

"It's worthless," Gary Kellmann said of his newly acquired patent for a lighted hair braid extension. The process took nearly two years -- at one point the agency lost his application, the St. Charles, Mo., inventor said -- and by then, the market was flooded with cheaper knockoffs.

Kellmann has invented lots of products, such as a flashing belly light that he says was a big hit. Over the years his inventions have been sold at such places as Wal-Mart and the shopping mall store Claire's Boutique.

"I won't file for a patent again, not unless it's a long-term product life cycle," Kellmann said. "In the novelty industry or the toy industry, if you have a trend, you have to jump on it now -- you can't wait for the patent industry to piddle around."

Kellmann's experience was unusual, agency spokeswoman Brigid Quinn said.

"We'd like to move faster ourselves," Quinn said. "What we have now that guards against that is electronic files, so there's no paper to be lost anymore."

The average patent takes about 27 months to approve, Quinn said. But, she added, unless Congress approves reforms that the agency wants to make, the process could eventually take three to four years. The reform package is awaiting approval on Capitol Hill.

The agency's procedures are complex and legal-intensive. Most applicants use attorneys; to practice before the agency, lawyers must pass a rigorous test that some say has a greater failure rate than the average state bar examination.

Mistakes aside, the patent office tries hard to encourage entrepreneurs, she said. Its annual conference for independent inventors was sold out last month in New Hampshire. A featured speaker there was Dean Kamen, creator of the Segway self-balancing transportation device.

"We're very aware of the great contribution that independent inventors make to the economy, so we try to be as helpful as possible in nurturing their creative spirit," Quinn said.

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On the Net

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: www.uspto.gov

Furminator: www.furminator.com