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The product of this case study featured in BBC1’s The Apprentice on 27 May 2009
Inspiration came to Graham Renny when he noticed how hard his wife was having to work to shovel up horse manure in the paddock. “I could see what an effort it was for her, doing all that manual work on her own,” he explains. “Clearing up after horses can be back-breaking work, so I set my mind to thinking about what I could do to make the job easier. After a few hours with some bits of wood and metal in the workshop, I came up with a working prototype of a device that can pick up and lift anything like manure, leaves or general garden rubbish, without the user having to bend down. It will make life easier for millions of people who enjoy gardening or keeping animals, but who want to avoid getting backache”.
According to Graham’s wife Susan, his invention – now called the Grab-O-Saurus® – will be as liberating for outdoor work as vacuum cleaners and washing machines have been for housework. And because they have had the foresight to patent the product, the Herefordshire husband-and-wife business team are confident that the market won’t be flooded with inferior imitations.
As most inventors will confirm, the initial idea was the easy bit. The real challenges lie in coming up with a detailed design that can be economically manufactured, finding the funds to take it through the prototype stage, marketing the product and, if it is successful, fending off the copycats.
Graham and Susan Renny are fortunate in having two sons who work for a high-tech electronics company and who saw the invention’s market potential. The first piece of advice the brothers offered was to use the services of a patent attorney and they recommended Paul Derry at Venner Shipley who had previously acted for the electronics company they both work for.
“Although I’ve got an engineering background,” says Graham Renny, “I had never patented anything before, and the world of marketing and product development was completely new to me. Paul Derry was very helpful in explaining how online patent databases are an excellent source of information when you’re trying to find out if anybody else has already developed a similar idea. He also guided us very professionally through the complexities of the different systems in the UK, Europe and the USA”.
Paul prepared a patent application for the invention and submitted it to the UK Intellectual Property Office with a special request for the application to be given accelerated status. A UK patent was granted just 11 months later, which is much sooner than usual.
Graham Renny’s status as a non-corporate applicant/inventor was an important factor in getting the patent application through the system so quickly. Small companies and individuals can be more vulnerable than big companies when it comes to possible illicit copying of their inventions and Paul Derry knew that the UKIPO will take this into account and accelerate applications that meet certain criteria.
Graham Renny’s US patent application went through the system at a similarly high speed, and was granted in March 2007, the fastest US patent application Paul Derry had ever handled. There is no urgent need for granted patent protection in continental Europe, and so the European patent application is progressing conventionally, allowing examination and grant costs to be deferred.
Venner Shipley also helped Graham Renny to get Grab-O-Saurus® registered as a European Community trade mark and 12 months later the trade mark was registered in the USA.