The Inventor Next Door

Carleen Hawn Michael Boland, 06.24.02 Independent tinkerers, following a lonely--and unlikely--path to fortune, get by with a little help from their friends. Just before 9 a.m. on a crisp Saturday morning in Reno, Nevada, a slow trickle of people filters into a drab, airless hospital conference room. At first glance, the group could be in a garden-variety 12-step support program. "I've got a problem," says a preppy-looking 30-year-old when asked why he is here. "It's too hard to work out on my own. A friend told me they could help me, so here I am." The 55 to 60 attendees greet one another while mingling by the coffee urn, then find seats at banquet tables. Each wears an artfully penned name tag decorated with a lightbulb in a cowboy hat. A gray-haired man in a powder-blue sport jacket and enormous sunglasses swings his gavel and invites the attendees to introduce themselves and explain why they are there. The first brave soul stands and nervously adjusts his Pittsburgh Pirates cap. "My name is Dieter Berndt, and I'm just a local yokel," he says. "I've developed an Earth-friendly, nontoxic solvent for cleaning circuit breakers and such. It's based on hydrocarbon chemistry, and I'm hoping one day it could lead to an in-home dry-cleaning service." "Like a dishwasher?" someone chimes in from the back. "That's right," says Berndt, 55, smiling with relief. "You could dry-clean your own clothes, just like you do your own dishes." Clearly, this isn't an ordinary self-help gathering. It's the monthly meeting of the Nevada Inventors Association (NIA), a 14-year-old support group for ordinary folks with a serious addiction to tinkering. Most are amateurs-day-job types who toil in garage workshops by night to develop gadgets that they hope will one day make them rich, or maybe get them to the break-even point. Tens of thousands of independent inventors all across America do the same thing, through another 97 inventor collectives from Florida to Alaska. Theirs is a lonely and unlikely path to fortune. While 11% of the 1.3 million patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from 1992 to 2001 went to independent inventors, less than 2% of these make a profit. It is rare that an independent inventor can afford to invest the money necessary to move a product out of the garage and onto store shelves. Most who try will fail and end up in debt. So once a month they get together to share their ideas, learn from each other's experiences, and maybe skim off a little optimism. For many, these meetings are the only place where their sacrifice and creativity are acknowledged, much less rewarded. Yet in a historical sense, these tinkerers--with predecessors like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison--embody the American spirit, and on a good day even stoke our economy. Occasionally the NIA hosts a guest speaker to offer advice and inspiration. Today's circuit preacher is Lawrence Udell, executive director of Intellectual Property International, a private consultancy based in Castro Valley, California. Guests are invited for their expertise, of course, but at most meetings, Berndt

says, members gather "for the kibitzing and kaffeeklatsch, to tap one another's brains for our own personal benefit." The NIA has a storied past. One of its members was the late Jerome Lemelson, the legendary, prodigious patent seeker who made billions off license revenues from more than 550 patents held in his name. Nevada, a state perhaps best known for washed-up silver miners and predatory cardsharps, ranks seventh in the nation for number of patents per capita issued to independent patent holders. Every member of the NIA is a would-be Lemelson. Many are experienced, like Don Costar, 78, whose home-crafted gardening tool, a Freddy Krugeresque metal "glove" called the Klam Rake, was once sold on QVC. "I sold 1,000 units in five minutes," Costar says. But, like most small-time inventors, he lost money. "As an independent inventor you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it," says Victor Patten, 58. He found out the hard way. A 40-year veteran of Pacific Gas & Electric, Patten says his invention, an adapter that saves energy by allowing a three-phase power meter to be read like a single-phase meter, was stolen by another businessman after Patten refused the man's offer to license his patent. "I told him I wanted to capitalize on it myself. He said 'OK, I'll just steal it. Take me to court.' He knew I didn't have $100,000 to fight a lawsuit. He called my bluff. Now I see you can't do it alone." Don Evans, 76, is one of the NIA's glittering exceptions to the going-broke-while-going-for-broke rule. A specialist in plastics molding, Evans holds more than 200 patents for an array of products that range from a pill dispenser for the elderly to an adjustable trellis system for training grapevines. Evco, the company he founded in 1964 to market his inventions, now employs more than 700 people at 12 factories in the United States, Mexico, and China. Evans won't say how much money he makes through Evco, but at the NIA he is treated with awe and reverence. "Some say Don is a billionaire," whispers Len Schweitzer, with more than a hint of jealousy. Schweitzer, 65, comes to these meetings hoping that someone like Evans or Udell will help him turn his idea into dollars, too. A ruddy-faced building contractor, Schweitzer invented the Rodmaster, a device that looks like an oversize car jack, which is used to bend steel rebar. "There is hardly a shape you can't make!" he says breathlessly. He demonstrates by twisting a length of rebar into a not-quite-completed figure 8. Schweitzer says he has made about 2,500 of the rough-hewn tools, which he sells to other building contractors for between $250 and $280. He figures he has invested $75,000 in the Rodmaster, but he hasn't made a profit yet and doesn't expect to anytime soon. "I don't know much about marketing. I've always worked with my hands," Schweitzer says. He'd like to license one of the six patents he holds on the Rodmaster to a company like Home Depot, but so far he has had no luck. On this day he gets some welcome encouragement. "You sell that for 250 bucks?" Udell squawks incredulously. "That's way too cheap. I know someone at Electrolux. You know, the Swedish corporation? They do $13 billion a year. They're heavily involved in construction. The door could be opened for a contract on this. Talk to me later." Udell, a spry septuagenarian whose raspy voice and western attire give him a striking resemblance to Yosemite Sam, lobs enthusiastic advice at nearly every NIA presenter. Among the mostly querulous crowd, he's a relentless cheerleader.

"Why don't you have a patent on that?" Udell demands of the next speaker, NIA member Larry Fowler. Fowler, 47, has just finished demonstrating his invention, the Cubic Laser 2. It's a handheld laser gun that uses clever software algorithms to instantly measure the volume of a standing stockpile, such as gravel or garbage. Stockpiles are typically estimated by a yard surveyor using a tape measure. In three years Fowler sold just three Cubic Laser 2 devices, at $2,400 each. It barely covered his costs. "This is as far as I go in the laser business," says Fowler grudgingly. "Why should I waste my money patenting something that has such limited demand? Besides, my friends don't associate my name with intellectual property. " Not all NIA members are this cynical. "I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for this group," says Janelle Muldner. "They listened to me." A well-groomed brunette, clad in form-fitting red pants and a low-cut sweater set, Muldner looks younger than her 46 years. The aesthetician-turned-entrepreneur was "laughed out of banks" when she tried to get funding for the Exalt (short for "exfoliating alternatives"), a handheld dermabrasion device that she hopes women will one day use to give themselves home facials. The folks at the NIA came to her rescue. They directed Muldner to a lawyer who drafted a patent application for her gadget. It's still pending. Although she could be the most unlikely inventor in the room (she found the Nebraska-based engineer who designed the prototype of her dermabrator through a chance meeting in a bar), things are falling into place fast for Muldner. She recently got $300,000 in funding from an ex-marketing executive of Silicon Valley-based Seagate Technology. The investor also arranged for Muldner to travel to Korea, where she landed a licensing agreement with a third-party manufacturer of home appliances. Muldner already has a purchase order from Fry's Electronics for 5,000 units of her micro-dermabrator. William Torch's invention isn't quite as sexy as Muldner's, but it has promising applications for human safety. Torch, 59, is a neurologist who specializes in sleep disorders. He invented a biosensor that uses infrared light to measure the frequency and speed of a human eye blink. Torch believes his invention could be used by truckers or pilots to warn them when they are getting tired, or by law enforcement officers to determine if someone is driving under the influence of alcohol. Called the Eye-Com, the device is small enough to fit on the inside of a pair of glasses. A typical eye blink lasts about one-fifth of a second. When the wearer of the glasses, in this case Torch, begins blinking slower than normal, say for half-second intervals, an alarm goes off. "The eyelid reflects infrared light while the eyeball absorbs or deflects it," Torch explains, as he stumbles about the room blinking with dramatic exaggeration. Torch has three patents and one pending on the Eye-Com, and he recently won a $100,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fund clinical tests on the device. If his invention works, Torch could get another CDC grant, which includes an option for the government to license his gadget. But if he's learned anything from the NIA, it is not to count too much on a single customer or government funding source. "I'm already talking with an aviation company in Southern California," he says. "Wonderful invention--tremendous potential," Udell shouts. "Talk to me later!" Carleen Hawn is a member of Forbes' Silicon Valley Bureau.