Thursday 10 September 2020

Concept Box - Connecting Inventors with Partners



What is Concept Box and what does it do?

Concept Box simplifies the task of inventors identifying partners for their inventions and of companies finding new inventive products or services. This is done while preserving the confidentially of the concepts and simplifying the process of applying Non Disclosure Agreements.

If you are a lone inventor or a company looking for new product ideas or solutions to product problems, please get in touch.

If you like the idea of Concept Box and would like to help, again get in touch.

Below is a description of the Concept box idea and list of concepts from just 2 of our conceptors1.

What problem is Concept Box solving?

There are 4 ways of introducing inventions to the marketplace.

  1. University Spin Outs come from academic research and are usually bigger projects with a lot of the background work already done.

  2. Company Suggestion Box introduces ideas from the workforce and are taken up by the company R&D structure

  3. Incubator Model - Individual with an idea wishing to build a business from the idea. This is a difficult path but there is a lot of help along the way for good ideas and good people.

  4. Concept Box – For individuals with good ideas who are not in the position to build a business from the ideas.

Problem a Conceptor faces – 1. Protecting the Concept IP

Often the individual inventor is not in the position to patent the concept or to take the concept to a patentable stage. Non Disclosure Agreements are normally used in this situation but this involves the conceptor having a MNDA with each organisation approached.

Concept Box will implement a simple Non Disclosure Agreement system which we have called an Intermediary Non Disclosure Agreement (INDA).

INDA - In the INDA, the Conceptor and the Adopter2 each have a Mutual Non Disclosure Agreement (MNDA) with Concept Box. In this way, both conceptor and adopter require only one INDA with Concept Box.

Once a deal is struck, IP protection is then up to the parties, not Concept Box.

Mechanism of an INDA


Problem a Conceptor faces – 2. Finding an Adopter

How does a conceptor find an adopter? Concept box will build up a database of companies who are willing to accept approaches (and those who are not). We will also know what information each company requires.

We also expect to learn of companies who are seeking concepts which can then be circulated amongst our conceptors to see if they have any ideas on solving the problems.

How does Concept Box Earn Money?

  1. Charge inventors a small fee per concept to be put on our database.

  2. Charge Adopters an annual fee to access our database and receive notification of new additions to the database which match their preferences.

  3. Charge a percentage fee on any licencing agreements made.

  4. Advertising on our website.

  5. Sell the software or the service to other geographic/language areas

Notes:-

1 Conceptor – A person or organisation that owns the IP of a concept.

2 Adopter - An organisation willing to discuss adopting and implementing the concept.