- Patent It Yourself (www.nolo.com).
This is a great book for learning how to write a
patent. I highly recommend it. I used this myself, followed the instructions and examples, and wrote a patent that was
approved on the first try.
- Delphion (www.delphion.com)
Delphion is one of the best IP search engines. Unfortunately it now charges a fee to be able to view
a full patent, but you can atleast perform the search and view the first page of patents for free.
- US Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov)
The USPTO has a lot of resources. On the plus side, their patent search is free even for viewing
the full patent. On the downside, the site itself seems to have some technical problems when
performing searches. Sometimes you may get error pages, have to hit "back", and try again until
it goes through. Other times, the images associated with a Patent don't show up.
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- Mind Manager (www.mindjet.com)
This is by far the best tool I have come across for brainstorming. Often when teams brainstorm,
someone creates all the categories ("buckets") first and people try to come up with ideas that
fit those buckets. This is probably the worst way to brainstorm as it constrains people's ideas
into the categories listed. Mind Manager solves this problem - its a white board that
allows teammates to just get all their ideas out. After all the ideas are captured, you can
drag and drop them into categories. I highly recommend this product! Its great for any
brainstorming, even software development.
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- TogetherJ (www.togethersoft.com)
TogetherJ is a decent tool for UML modeling. I like to use it for modeling usecases and stubbing
out code although it has alot more features. One of the cool features is that it will output
JavaDoc. Although you can actually code in it, I prefer to use a separate IDE. The downsides of
this application are the cost (very expensive!) and that its a major memory hog.
- The Unified Modeling Language User Guide (amazon link)
The UML User Guide is a fairly comprehensive guide to UML. Its written by the "founders" of UML - Grady Booch,
James Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson.
- Building Web Applications with UML (amazon link)
This book provides a good example of an application of UML. Its best if you already know UML
or have a basic understanding before reading this book.
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- Toy Inventor/Designer Guide
This is a publication put out by the Toy Industry Association. Its a good place to start.
- American International Toy Fair (www.toy-tia.org/AITF/)
If you do invent a game or toy, this is the best place to market it. Thousands of buyers from across the world go to this
event in New York each year. Its an amazing site to see - the whole Javitts Center is turned into
one big toy store.
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