PATENTING NEW IDEAS; CONSULTING BUSINESS ASSISTS INVENTORS

Gary Kellmann is an entrepreneur of a different sort. He recently started a consulting business for inventors.

"I try to help the inventor from idea to final product," Kellmann said. "I guide them and maybe help them with marketing, finding an investor and learning the basics of inventing."

Another of his functions is research to find out if a patent exists for the inventor's proposed product.

"I do a lot of patent searches," he said. "I usually charge $30 to $50 to go to the Patent Depository in St. Louis. They have over 5 million patents on file and I go through them all. I'll find three or four ideas similar to my client's and save them some money in the long run.

"If there's not an idea similar to yours, chances are that the idea won't work. It's highly likely that if you have an idea, there will be something similar to it. Think of how many people are in the world, if you think of an idea today, it's probable that someone on the other side of the world has had the same idea."

Occasionally, however, Kellmann meets an inventor who distrusts his knowledge of the process of creating a new invention. "A lot of people look at me and see how young I am and don't think I know what I'm doing," he said.

The 23-year-old Kellmann has plenty of experience in the field of inventions. He is an inventor and has been creating new gadgets and improvements on existing things for the past five years.

His consulting business is run in his home and he said he helps two or three people a week with their inventions. Kellmann has had about 15 to 20 clients since he started his business in December.

Kellmann promises confiden~tia~lity to his clients, until they are ready for their idea to be made public.

Most inventions people bring to him aren't new things but improvements on old products. It is Kellmann's job to help those inventors obtain patents and perhaps investors for their products.

He said there are three types of patents: plant, utility and design.

Plant patents deal with things like hybrids of crop plants.

His clients are more concerned with the other two patents. The utility patent covers how a thing works and what makes it different in its function. This is more important than the design patent, which deals with how a product looks.

Finding a good patent attorney is invaluable, he said.

Kellmann, who is still working on his own inventions, wants to help inventors make their ideas become reality, not do it for them.

"I only deal with serious inventors," Kellmann said, "only people who are serious about their product. I don't want someone who has an idea but wants me to put it together and make the prototype for them, find an investor, market the product and then give them half the money."

Kellmann's latest creation is a political gag gift, just in time for the presidential election in November.

The process of going from idea to a marketable product is long and complicated.

Kellmann said as soon as an inventor comes up with an idea, he should write down the idea and have two witnesses who understand the idea sign their names.

"That's the first step when you have an idea," Kellmann said. "The first to invent has the legal rights, not the first to patent. If you can prove you invented it before another person, and you documented the development process very well, you have a better chance of winning a legal case. It's so basic, but you have to know that."

Documenting the process, knowing your target market, creating a prototype and raising capital to successfully market the product are the basic steps of taking an invention from idea to finished product.

Kellmann will take what he knows about the process of invention and patenting to an invention convention in California next month.

He will be one of only 25 people nationwide who will hold a workshop at the fourth annual International Inventors and Entrepreneurs Expo.