Hub tenants partner to produce D-I-Y toolkit for patent applications

Discussing the ease of use of their Patent Toolkit, are standing ltr Janhendrik Oosthuizen and Donrich Jordaan of Trydian Interactive and seated ltr Carel Smit and Wessel van Wyk of Smit & Van Wyk Patent Attorneys.

Two of the tenants at The Innovation Hub, Trydian Interactive and Smit & Van Wyk Patent Attorneys Inc, recently partnered to produce an innovative first for inventors and the intellectual property community. The parties conceptualised and designed a novel patent toolkit which provides inventors who wish to file provisional patent applications themselves with all the tools they need to ensure that their ideas are properly protected.

According to Carel Smit of Smit & Van Wyk, inventors have always had only two options available for filing provisional patent application: Hiring patent attorneys to draft the application at a cost of R5 000 to R10 000 or more, or filing on their own without any guidance, which more often than not resulted in inadequate protection and the loss of their rights to the invention.

"Most people just don't have the funds to throw at an untested idea, with no guarantee of success", says Smit. The patent toolkit offers inventors an affordable 'do-it-yourself' solution with an introductory booklet on drafting patent specifications, numerous examples, and all the forms needed to file an application. It also includes the template used by attorneys to draw up a patent specification. The toolkit combines all these components with multimedia elements to bring the content to life.

As expert knowledge partners in this joint venture project, Smit & Van Wyk provided the content for the toolkit. According to Trydian Managing Director, Janhendrik Oosthuizen, "the challenge was to incorporate multimedia with our instructional design methodology to make the content understandable, interesting and applicable for a target market with absolutely no legal background".

The patent toolkit is a step-by-step guide that enables inventors to easily and cost-effectively file provisional patent applications - from the day the invention is completed right up to the day that they are properly protected. Trydian Interactive's Donrich Jordaan adds that in addition to their instructional design methodology which, with the help of Smit & Van Wyk, includes many practical examples of best practise and common errors, the presentation of the package - to which Trydian brings vast expertise - makes it visually enticing and user friendly.

Smit & Van Wyk's Wessel van Wyk points out that the combination of these elements leads to one outcome. "If the tools provided in the toolkit are implemented correctly, inventors unable to afford the services of patent professionals will be able to market their ideas safely and really test it, so that when they file their complete patent application, they can give the patent professional that they'll be working with something of much greater value to work with", he says.

According to Smit, the number of people wanting to file their own provisional patent application will grow and awareness needs to be raised across all spheres. "We want to see buy-in from more individuals in the local intellectual property system because intellectual property really is a mainstay of the economy", he said.

For more information on the Patent Toolkit, visit www.trydian.com/patent.

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