Gymnastics
Equipment
Patents are Expensive
The equipment
patent process is not an inconsequential fee costing several thousand dollars
per equipment item. Successfully defending a patent can be expensive
to attempt and difficult to enforce against other companies who take the
basic idea, make a few changes and market their own version of an original
design.
Show It Publicly First and You Can't Patent It
Patent law,
not that we are legal experts on the subject, also restricts the patenting
of products that have been publicly displayed or marketed. Once you
show it publicly, you lose your right to patent protection.
Consider Licensing Your Designs
We are familiar
with these problems as we have approximately 67 custom designed pieces
of training equipment which have yet to decide what to do about.
There is always the possibility of licensing, in which after patenting
an equipment idea, it can be licensed to a manufacturer and/or marketing
company for a fee or a percentage.
Recovering Costs Slow and Difficult
Still, in
our case, it would take us over $200,000 in patent fees just to get in
a position to license our equipment ideas. Whether we would ever
be able to recover those costs and the costs of negotiating licenses is
a subject of debate.
Build Your Own One-of-a Kind
So in the
area of custom designed gymnastics training equipment, coaches and gym
owners are left to come up with their own ideas and build one-of-a-kind
items themselves.
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