AboutMaurice Duteau Expertise As a contract manufacturer, product designer, mechanical engineer, small business owner I know what it takes to get ideas from the drawing board and into production.
Experience My business is located in Shanghai China where I've been doing contract manufacturing for the past 10 years. My experience on the ground in China has given me a good understanding of how things get done over here.
Question Hi, I have 2 inventions in the field of waste heat recovery. They both went through the process of the National Institute of Standards and Technology about 10 years ago. Even though they did not use the highest heat transfer materials to do the tests, they were found to be sound products. The reason for not funding me was that they believed similar products were about to hit the market. It has been 10 years and nothing even close has shown up.
At the time I had my Refrigeration Engineering teacher ( 23 patents of his own ) on board and we submitted them to his patent att. His response was that they are too simple to have a patent with any teeth in it. Maybe only only one claim could be achieved, as it is so simple and it is a form of heat transfer used in the refrigeration field, but not in this application.
My products work so well that as soon as they hit the public market they will be copied all over the world and without an ability to get any protection I need to find someone who can make the next steps happen and get the physical product out as much as possible before others, probably with deep pockets take over the market.
I Don't need to be greedy as the market is so huge, I would just like to not be like most inventors that do not make the money on what they came up with.
If you are in this category I would like to talk more with you. Thank you very much.
P.S. I am one of the experts in the heating and cooling part of this web site if you want to check me out.
Answer Good to hear from you John. Sounds like you are more of an expert than myself in your domain as well as your efforts with the patents. Where I might be able to help is with implementing the product and just going for it on your own which is what I end up doing with my 'great' ideas. A trade name can give you a certain amount of protection.
Send on an NDA, I make thermostats so I know a few air conditioning companies that you can talk to.
