Getting a Patent the Hard Way
What was I thinking? I ruminated as I walked from campus to my car. What hubris! To think I could take my math brain and dominate Law school. Fear entered my soul after finding out I had gotten a C- in my family law class. I felt out of my league, I felt I had no control over whether I was successful or not. I was already $30,000 into my law school career and had $60,000 more to go. It was too late to turn around but, I didn’t want to “throw good money after bad.”
My annihilation over a bad grade was probably due to the compounded stress of being on a difficult design project at The Boeing Company in addition to law school. At Boeing I was designing the tail cone of the new P-8 Poseidon. The tail cone housed the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) and also had an aft facing 10 foot boom containing equipment that was mission critical. To protect the mission critical equipment, the boom had to withstand a powerful lightning strike. With an aluminum aircraft this requirement would be easy but the mission equipment was so sensitive to magnetism, that we could not use metal, even nonmagnetic metal. The concerns about magnetism were so great that the requirement went even further, we could not make the tailcone with any metal tools or fasteners. Another requirement was that the tailcone must be incredibly stiff which meant we needed Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) to get the stiffness without being metal.
Tail cone of the P-8 Poseidon
Typically, CFRP parts are laid up on a tool made from high nickel steel called “Invar” due to its very low Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE) matching the low CTE of CFRP. After cure, the parts are cut out with a router utilizing a carbide bit. Unfortunately, all of these typical manufacturing processes were unacceptable due to the metal tooling. Time was ticking because we were already a year late, so we had to get creative. We knew carbon tooling would have the same CTE as carbon fiber parts so we designed a chopped carbon fiber tool machined to profile. Chopped fiber is advantageous because it has out of plane tension strength where carbon tape or carbon fabric does not. We needed good z-direction or out of plane strength so the tool didn’t delaminate when we pulled the part off. Also, we busily designed a tool for the boom, assembly tools and, we found non-metallic fasteners, and nonmetallic router bits.
In the end, due the extreme sensitivity of the device in the boom which required near impossible manufacturing and near impossible maintenance in the field, the Navy decided to delete the boom from the P-8. If you look closely, you can see the little nub where the boom was supposed to go.
The P-8 Poseidon
Good design jobs are fun and smart designers never stay more than 3 years on a program to avoid getting stuck in sustainment, which is fixing minor drawing and manufacturing issues down in the factory. That is of course, unless you are in law school, in which case, low stress sustainment is the way to go.
In addition to law school and work, I had a small family of a stay at home wife and 4 kids under 6. I looked forward to weekends and mornings with them. They were my joy and only when I thought about how much of their life I was missing did I feel family stress. I enjoyed learning in law school. Every subject was new and unrelated to all my previous education. Class was exciting and informative, and I never wanted to miss it. Nevertheless, the combination of everything, at times, was too much. I was spread too thin, I had built a house of cards and one small breeze could send it all crashing down.
How did I get here? Why did I choose this immense pressure and personal risk?
My crazy law school path actually started my senior year at Brigham Young University (BYU). A class partner and I came up with an invention that would solve the drawbacks of conventional rear suspension in mountain bikes. My partner was majoring in physics and very theoretical, so he solved the math problems. I, as the engineer, took the theory and brought it into existence by building a prototype in the shop. The prototype worked great and proved our hypothesis that a four bar linkage could solve the power loss issues of large travel rear suspension. Now what? I have an invention that I think will revolutionize downhill mountain biking. Can I show the prototype in class? Can I give our oral presentation and describe what we did? Do I need to patent it first and how much will that cost?
I could not afford a patent and by nature, I am a very risk adverse, do-it-your-selfer, so I didn’t pay any money to get advice on protecting the invention. I instead did online research and became very interested in patent law. I thought about keeping the invention secret and then going to law school right after graduation so I could patent it myself. However, I was married and had a one year old son so instead I took a safe route and took a good paying job at Boeing in Renton, Washington. I worked at the Renton factory fixing design issues with the Next Generation 737.
I almost got laid off my first year at Boeing and I was worried about a next layoff. Also, I was getting tons of low value work and not getting good new design work. I heard about Boeing’s Learning Together Program (LTP) that would train an employee for a less cyclical industry. I could get scuba certified, become a hairdresser or get a Juris Doctor and Boeing would pay for it. I would be crazy to pass up this opportunity but I had no idea what I was getting into.
I started at Seattle University school of Law in 2004 and graduated in 2008. It went by in a blur. I started with two kids and ended with four kids. When I think back, it is like 4 years of my life are unaccounted for. It was very hard on my family and it was hard on my marriage and it was hard on me. I do not recommend it but, I felt like I had to do it. That is a lesson for life. There are opportunities that are at the same time, crazy to pass up and insane to pursue. Sail boats have a rudder for a reason: sometimes you don’t want to go where the wind is pushing you.
Another lesson I learned is that while I didn’t pay tuition, I did pay too high of a personal price. I missed out on family, church service, friends, sports and vacations for 4 years and spent $32,000 in increased taxes to patent my own invention when the cost to have a professional file, prosecute and maintain my patent would be only $14,000. And finally, I learned getting a patent is actually the easy part anyway. The hard part, where most home inventors fail, is raising money, finding investors, and marketing the invention.
