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marketing my design - 8/28/2003 2:15:17 AM   
Cactus.



Posts: 6138
Joined: 12/19/2001
From: CamborneCornwall, UNITED KINGDOM
Status: offline 		can we have a silhouette at least so we can see whats so different without nicking anything? might get some interest. after seeing some German ww2 stuff, NOTHING you do is gonna be that radical

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       Post #: 26

Patent...? - 8/28/2003 2:42:03 AM   
heli001



Posts: 1138
Joined: 4/23/2002
From: Charlotte, NC, USA
Status: offline 		Eric,

I am pretty sure that the Wright Bros., Glenn Curtiss and Boeing have the design patents on flying machines in general, and down pat. (no pun intended)

Unless you have something that is totally revolutionary to aviation, or a NEW type of UAV, that no one else has thought of yet, the patent road will be a very hard one to follow.

As for patent attorneys, they are something akin to sharks, and they love the smell of NEW blood and money. Your copyrights to YOUR design are your best protection.

_____________________________

W. C. Fischer - Panacea Engineering Co.
AMA 3156 Scientific Leader Member
Helicopters Don't Fly....They Beat the Air Into Submission..!

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       Post #: 27

marketing my design - 8/28/2003 5:03:49 AM   
Rahlberg13



Posts: 263
Joined: 3/1/2002
From: Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, USA
Status: offline 		Eric,

If you're still looking to kit it yourself, email me. I can help you out.

Russ
Oakdale Aircraft
[email]rahlberg@oakdaleaircraft.com[/email]

(in reply to aeroanalysis)
       Post #: 28

design patent - 8/29/2003 7:10:55 AM   
aeroanalysis



Posts: 101
Joined: 8/16/2003
From: davis, CA, USA
Status: offline 		Hey folks,

I'm not talking about a utility patent. I am applying for a design patent. Design patents apply to anything that is unique. Tire manufacturers patent their tread designs, for example. The reason I am keeping the airplane under wraps is because any potential kit manufacturer or distributor will probably want the airplane to be a complete surprise to the industry.

So, any patent attorneys out there?

Thanks for tuning in.

Daniel

(in reply to aeroanalysis)
       Post #: 29

marketing my design - 8/29/2003 2:52:28 PM   
Cactus.



Posts: 6138
Joined: 12/19/2001
From: CamborneCornwall, UNITED KINGDOM
Status: offline 		some of the new citron cars are a surprise to the industry, so much so that they now provide sick bags at the unveiling's

as far as pleasing shapes on planes go, there is nothing left... if the shape hasn't been tried by the Germans or a drunk RC flyer then it dosn't exist and never will.
i bet when we all see this thing we're gonna say, ahhhhhhh its just one of those thats a bit..........

is a silhouette going to give too much info away?

_____________________________

My half dead website www.philsrcworld.fsnet.co.uk new site coming soon.
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       Post #: 30

Re: design patent - 8/29/2003 6:58:04 PM   
Highflight-RCU


 

Posts: 597
Joined: 2/28/2003
From: Houston, TX, USA
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by aeroanalysis
Hey folks,

I'm not talking about a utility patent. I am applying for a design patent. Design patents apply to anything that is unique. Tire manufacturers patent their tread designs, for example. The reason I am keeping the airplane under wraps is because any potential kit manufacturer or distributor will probably want the airplane to be a complete surprise to the industry.

So, any patent attorneys out there?

Thanks for tuning in.

Daniel [/QUOTE]

Trust me when I tell you this; I have the experience.
Design patents are virtually worthless because all that someone has to do is change your design by 5% and it becomes a "new" design that is no longer protected by your Design Patent. What WOULD be advantageous is to give your design a proprietary name because NO ONE can use that name if you simply Trade Mark it (which requires only declaration with the "trademark" symbol whenever you use it.. it doesn't have to actually be registered)>

Here's the deal: The only way you're going to make money with your design is to actually market the product yourself, not by getting a Design Patent and then letting everyone fall all over you to license it. That ain't gonna happen. As noted above, if a company wanted to market a "similar" design, they would only have to change it a little and then manufacture and market the kits themselves. Again, it's whoever makes and markets your design that will make the money.

And if you want to market it yourself, it would be better if you let everyone at least see a sillouette of it to garner more interest.
What you're doing now by building up the "excitement" is overhyping (probably unintentionally) the design so that when it does come out, and it's just another airplane albeit a little different, we're all going to say: "That's It?".

You've got everyone expecting so much that you may not be able to live up to the expectations in which case it may flop in the marketplace.
Unless you've invented an anti-gravity aircraft, it's still an aircraft that has to conform to the laws of universal physics which means it's going to have a wing (somewhere) and a stabilizing appendage (somewhere) and if what you have is so different from what's been done in the last 100 years, it may not fly well enough to be marketable either.

Jes' tryin' to hep' yoo.

Highflight

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       Post #: 31

marketing - 8/29/2003 7:40:36 PM   
ProfLooney



Posts: 2413
Joined: 1/18/2002
From: Moline, IL, USA
Status: offline 		THe best thing to do is to not worry abt the kitting of it. sorry to say if you have someone else kit it you wont get a whole lot and if you kit it you will have so much tied into it that it would take a while to start making a profit. as for the patenting it will cost you a pretty good penny and you would have to sell a lot of them to break even not to mention like others have stated abt someone just altering the design a hair and selling it.

What I would seriously think of doing is prototypeing it and get a lot of exposure then market it yourself as plans only. you can make more off of it by just selling the plans than a kit as then you just have the cost of printing to deal with and your market is larger as most modellers can easily afford a set of plans and are willing to take a chance than on a kit. so My oipinion would be plans as the way to go then if the plans sell really good get with a laser cutter and work something out with them to supply the kits and maybe give you a portion of the proceeds.

Joe

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       Post #: 32

marketing my design - 8/29/2003 9:59:32 PM   
William Robison



Posts: 20269
Joined: 11/10/2002
From: Mary Esther, Florida, FL, USA
Status: offline 		Daniel:

I thnk Joe (Prof. Looney) proably has given you the best advice of all.

Build one and fly it, see where it breaks, build another, so forth, until the structure is totally reliable.

When the design is solid, fly it everywhere there will be widespread coverage, and market the plan.

Of course, being a "Graduate" of Rutan's Scaled Composites you might have everything fine "Out of the box." But cracks can develop in places no one would expect. And you will always see places to increase the strength without a weight penalty, and other places to lose weight without losing strength.

And for the rest of you:

Many who have seen a fair number of my posts will wonder why I was initially skeptical, and have been quiet since.

Daniel sent me some "Cad" pictures, and while the basic concept is not new, there's really no way it could be "All New" and conform to the rules Mother Nature requires airplanes to follow, if they are expected to fly.

The design is "Conventional," but still sufficiently "Different" that he may do very well with it.

But I'd rather use RCV engines than the Hacker B50 motors he mentioned in an earlier post.

Bill.

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AMA 25139 - More than 40 years.

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       Post #: 33

marketing my design - 8/29/2003 10:26:17 PM   
Cactus.



Posts: 6138
Joined: 12/19/2001
From: CamborneCornwall, UNITED KINGDOM
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]The design is "Conventional," but still sufficiently "Different" that he may do very well with it. [/QUOTE]
Bah, too much p*$$*ng around now, my interest has peaked, wake me up when we see this thing, i might open an eyelid

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My half dead website www.philsrcworld.fsnet.co.uk new site coming soon.
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       Post #: 34

marketing my design - 8/30/2003 10:42:26 PM   
rikhye



Posts: 214
Joined: 3/2/2002
From: Sacramento, CA, USA
Status: offline 		i have to go on williams on this thread its a total loser

dude if you dont know what engines to put on your design then u dont a know a thing

i would certainly encourage anyone who came up with something but this is just a joke...

patents............ u must be dreaming dude ... get a life


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Sunil Rikhye

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       Post #: 35

Re: marketing - 8/31/2003 7:32:07 PM   
viperred



Posts: 82
Joined: 8/10/2003
From: somewhere, OR, USA
Status: offline 		As someone who spends a lot of time in front of the computer working on designs myself.. I really think it's ridiculous to hide your concept. After all if you can't trust the people here on rcuniverse then your really screwed.. and as already stated, someone will take your design (perhaps even oversee's) change it (heck not even 5%) 1% and call it by a different name. The Hobby industry right now is destroyed. Some of the best R/C designers in the world made sailplanes and flew them out of Santa Rosa where I used to live. They made some of the best stuff in the world. They too thought they'd make some money from there kits.. no such luck at all. Every month new kit builders go into business and then immediately go out of business. They just follow the sacraficial trail off the cliff. And even though these people just keep jumping off the cliff, it still doesn't stop people all the time from going into hobby business's. Believe me I know this. I once owned my own hobby business as well. I'm not trying to shoot down your dream, but do it out of fun, and passion, and expect to never make any money with it, and that way you'll always enjoy it.

Now as for plans.. Joe is not exactly right... I wish he were.. but as a silver level power seller on ebay, I can tell you a bit about selling plans. Simply put they don't sell well at all. I have bought palmer plans I thought I would build, and when I went to sell them got less then 1/3 of their value. You will not make much money after the expense of printing them unless you just happen to have gods gift of aircraft.

Let me give you another good tip here about selling.. I know a lot of people on ebay and all over try to sell their plans. BTW none of them are rich, or have made anything but maybe a couple hundred at most here and there. But these guys always say the same thing. Basically if it's not #1. A WARBIRD #2. AN AIRCRAFT THAT HAS FLOWN OR IS CURRENTLY FLYING. or #3 SOMETHING SO RADICAL THAT IT WILL SELL ITSELF (Pond Racer etc.)

Note from #1-#3 these categories fall off in popularity.. as #1. being most popular.

Given this in mind, doesn't sound like your building a known warbird, and even if it's a new concept warbird, your going to fall into category #3 which is probably the absolute hardest to sell plans or even kits of. I suggest honestly trying to be in category #1, or #2. You'll have hard enough work just in those categories.

Sounds like you are trying to kit something that will fall into category #3.. and I wish you the best of luck there, because (and check it out on ebay... you'll see what i mean!!) your probably never make more then a few dollars ( I mean literally a few dollars..) heh heh..

What I reccomend, is build your prototype.. as everyone here is stated, fly it, get all the kinks out.. and tour with it.. if it's really "All that and a bag of chips" people will mail order/internet order the plans from you. You may only make one sale a month, if you can sell the plans for $60.00-90.00 it may be worth it. Realize though Palmer Plans sends you anywhere from 4-5 Massive sheets of plans, huge amount of doccumentation etc. etc.. so it's not like you won't have some working printing these plans out for people.

Well thas my 2 pesos...

Paul

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ProfLooney
What I would seriously think of doing is prototypeing it and get a lot of exposure then market it yourself as plans only. you can make more off of it by just selling the plans than a kit as then you just have the cost of printing to deal with and your market is larger as most modellers can easily afford a set of plans and are willing to take a chance than on a kit. so My oipinion would be plans as the way to go then if the plans sell really good get with a laser cutter and work something out with them to supply the kits and maybe give you a portion of the proceeds.

Joe [/QUOTE]

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       Post #: 36

Plans - 8/31/2003 8:59:20 PM   
ProfLooney



Posts: 2413
Joined: 1/18/2002
From: Moline, IL, USA
Status: offline 		Well Paul i semi agree with you but a person can make some money on plans. Take for example this ME 109E Set I am working on and maybe one day will finish. people know I am working on it and it falls in categories 1 and 3. since it is a warbird it will sell and since it is so radically different it selling itself. NOw people Make 109's but most are the G model. a lot of us guys like the looks of an E better but noone does one and brian tayl;ors is too small and crap for plans mainly because you have to carve the tail and because he has it concave as the real one to offset thrust it makes it even worse to try and carve and have it symetrical. Now I posted I was working on a set of plans and at first didnt even mention I wanted to market it but was doing it for me and I have over 70 orders already for if I ever get it done simply because it is a popular plane in a version a lot of people want. the way I see it is if it isnt a warbird it probably wont sell and if it is a warbird it better be unusual or of a popular design in a Version not done that people want for example a Zirolis stuka is a B model but there are a lot of people that want a G model so that would sell. the common P-51 or P-47 have been done so many times they are useless as a set of plans to try and market.

As for mr palmer though he may be a good architect is not a very good designer. his planes look nice but his main problem is he crams everything on top of the plans itself and you need to be an engineer to read them. I know i have his C-130 plans and had to pull them into cad and totally redo them to make them useable not to mention the fact the plane was on 6 sheets when combined made 2 sheets and none of the alignment marks lined up and all those abbreviations he uses are non industry standard but more something he made up and if you lose your instructions as i had he wants 25 bucks just for a sheet of instructions to understand the abbreviations. not to mention his plans are priced outrageously.

I figured on pricing my 109 plans abt 50 bucks which is average for a giant scale warbird now figure $20 to print and ship them that gives me a profit of 30 a set of plans and at 75 orders $2250 to spend on my projects. and if not another set of plans sell then I at least made up for my time and got a few extra bucks. The only way you will be able to make anything from a set of plans is to tell others what you are working on and share it with them on forums like this and get input secret projects do nothing but generate interest for a few days then die off. if someone is mentioning some project they are working on and planning on marketing they need to be ready to share make rough pictures of what it will look like if it is an unknown type of plane and to get others involved in the project other wise it wont be worth the effort.

Joe

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Great War R/C
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       Post #: 37

marketing my design - 8/31/2003 9:23:03 PM   
SCALECRAFT


 

Posts: 1495
Joined: 1/7/2002
From: MONTEBELLO, CA, USA
Status: offline 		I have also tried my hand at what I thought was a new concept in aircraft design. In 1994 we started a company called Scalecraft.

It featured all epoxy glass construction. 7 WWII warbirds of around 50" to 64" spans. Hollow glass wing and detailed panels.

The 54" Corsair, copied off a Jemco wood model with foam core wings was the "plug" with one piece hollow glass wing was the best seller and best flyer.

Showed all at the pasadena IMS show. Sold a few there. Most people advised us to make larger models. although they were impressed with the concept.

10 months later and a few less freinds, I filled all the remaning orders and closed. prices were from $209 to 289.

What went wrong??

Cost too much to produce here. Very labor intesive. China, $150.00 a month for the best workers.

Couldn't deliver timely. Modelers want it now!!

Cost of rent. materials, bus licenses, utilities, and all the things that cost to get one in a box and ready to ship was being killed by the overseas stuff.

Ads in magazines. You have to buy in (term)months.

If I layed one up, now you me to lay one up, I'm the designer, you'll have to pay me for my expensive time. Never work.

To get anyone to carry the item, you will have to discount it so much that there may not be any profit in it for you. Then they may not want you to compete with them. can't sell it yourself.

Although ones ego drives them to do things to show all the most immpressive thing in the field, and ambition, do the math, it may not cut it.

And also,as mentioned before copies of glass parts are so easy to do today. That will happen.

Look at all the off brands that come out of after a new design or hot seller of something. you will not be protected, pist, but not protected. Copyright or not, to seek recourse you will have to pay one of those sharks. I have many lawyer friends, until you need them, then your hourly.

So after $60,000 I have a few molds, and 10 months of glory.
Oh, and ofcourse the $60,000 name Scalecraft.

Good luck

Steve

(in reply to aeroanalysis)
       Post #: 38

Re: Plans - 8/31/2003 9:24:18 PM