ryan_hunter
Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? TX
I have an idea for an invention I would like to build in the future. I'm not an engineer though so I would like to be able to patent the idea/concept now, and then hire an engineer to create the actual blueprints in about a year from now. I am not trying to patent troll - I actually would like to create this, I just cannot afford to do so right now.
My question is: can you patent an idea itself? Or does it need to be much more fleshed out, have exact schematics for how the parts will work, etc?
For example, let's just say in the year 1900 you came up with the idea of "putting a phone in a watch." Assuming nobody else had thought of that idea yet and nobody was even close to working on anything similar, could you have patented that basic idea, so that no tech companies in the future would have been able to build and sell phone watches? You would not have drawn any blueprints or planned any exact specifications, but just attempted to patent "the idea of putting a phone in watch, with little icons on the screen that you can click to do make calls and send texts, and so on." Is this possible and would it stop anyone from stealing the idea, or is it not valid?
I have an idea for an invention I would like to build in the future. I'm not an engineer though so I would like to be able to patent the idea/concept now, and then hire an engineer to create the actual blueprints in about a year from now. I am not trying to patent troll - I actually would like to create this, I just cannot afford to do so right now.
My question is: can you patent an idea itself? Or does it need to be much more fleshed out, have exact schematics for how the parts will work, etc?
For example, let's just say in the year 1900 you came up with the idea of "putting a phone in a watch." Assuming nobody else had thought of that idea yet and nobody was even close to working on anything similar, could you have patented that basic idea, so that no tech companies in the future would have been able to build and sell phone watches? You would not have drawn any blueprints or planned any exact specifications, but just attempted to patent "the idea of putting a phone in watch, with little icons on the screen that you can click to do make calls and send texts, and so on." Is this possible and would it stop anyone from stealing the idea, or is it not valid?