It might not be a flashy gadget with neon lights or a souped-up software program spitting out invention-related marketing materials, but the United Inventors Association remains a beacon for inventors and entrepreneurs.
As a nonprofit corporation, the UIA and its Web site, www.uiausa.com, offer advice and informational support for getting ideas to the marketplace.
Plenty of innovators have fallen prey to invention marketing fraud. For those looking to avoid that fate, the UIA works to address the challenges for inventors and inventor associations with reliable and credible information and support.
"The content on the site is completely nonbiased, and the service providers are prescreened," says UIA Executive Director Bonnie Griffin Kaake. This way the UIA can filter the "bad guys" from the reliable content providers and have a bigger and better resource pool for innovators.
The site has other benefits, including Web-based communication with other inventors. "I absolutely recommend that inventors go to forums," says Kaake. "Post questions. Communicate through this venue. That way, they'll get the most reliable answers." And members of the UIA have access to Ask the Expert, a panel with vast experience working within the inventor community.
Perhaps the most valuable and growing service the UIA offers is the opportunity to have inventors' ideas evaluated by honest, objective third-party analysts.
This evaluation - known as the Innovation Assessment Program - gives idea people the gift of caution. Not the most romantic of gifts, but nonetheless important for anyone looking to go commercial with an invention.
"This program becomes more and more popular every day," says Kaake. "It is the most objective evaluation out there. Just as most inventors do not have the expertise to patent their own inventions, most also lack the know-how to determine the commercial potential of their inventions or ideas."
Similar evaluations are available, but their scope is limited. They see through the lens of investment: whether they want to invest in your product and whether it is marketable through their company. The Innovative Assessment Program determines the marketability of your idea in terms of the invention itself - not how well it fits into a specific sector.
Gerald Udell, director of the program, has more than 30 years of experience in invention evaluation. He is generally regarded as the leading expert on invention evaluation in the United States.
He is the creator of the PIES (Preliminary Innovation Evaluation Service) format, the most widely used evaluation format in the nation. It is a comprehensive, structured evaluation system using 45 criteria to evaluate the commercial potential of your idea and to provide you with a risk profile.
The process takes about six weeks for the evaluators to compose a 21-page report of your idea's commercial potential. It costs $312 for U.S. residents and $332 for nonresidents. The cost is comparable to about one hour of a patent attorney's time or a very low-cost patent search.
But, as Kaake points out, the benefits could save you a fortune.
