Battaglia has spent one-fifth of his life pursuing his sports-gear patent -- an idea that was supposed to liberate him from the tedium of working for others but so far hasn't. His disappointment might have been predicted. The vast majority of patents do not result in a marketable product, and patents filed by first-time inventors are particularly likely to remain dormant. "Most inventors do better on their second or third or fourth patent," explains Apley, the former patent official who is teaching a class for new patent examiners. "The rate of success is low on their first try, because they don't usually understand the need for market research. What sells is as important as what's invented. Some inventions aren't the better mousetrap. The thing to do is to know your market and know when your idea is a loser."
Oddly enough, Apley blames inventors groups in part for the phenomenon of inventors' tending to get stuck on a lousy patent -- even though he thinks the groups constitute a positive force in the invention world. The problem is, he says, that "the presentations that inventors see at these groups can sometimes give the impression that an inventor can think, 'I have a patent. Now I can make a million dollars.' " He adds: "I'm sorry to say that's not the answer. Getting a patent is probably the easiest part of the whole equation."
Battaglia's experience certainly bears that out. He thought that the journey his idea would take from a patent to a product hanging on a hook at Sportmart would be long but not endless. He has wealthy friends who own their own companies who don't seem to have struggled as hard as he has. One guy is a developer. "His house literally has wings," Battaglia says. "When I go there, I dream, 'My God, if I get my patent going ...' "
But instead of living well off royalty checks, Battaglia must log long hours at Thrifty each week. "I don't even make my age in income," he says. He works in a small gray hut with a creaky sliding door located on a stretch of freeway near a trailer park, a place that sells pornos on DVD, and a garage that installs neon tubing on the undercarriage of cars. The offices are filled with what looks like thrift-store furniture. The kitchen is grungy. Battaglia had to install a drop-key lockbox himself by cutting a hole in the side of the building.
Some moments make it seem not so bad. On the afternoon I am there, an older fellow comes into the store looking for help. He's been in an accident with his rental car and needs a new one. Battaglia, clad in a white polo with the Thrifty logo on it, takes the guy's license and paperwork. Then he notices that the man is from Ann Arbor, Mich. Against all odds, it turns out that he works with the research scientist who led Battaglia to believe that one of his students could build a prototype for him. The car renter listens patiently to Battaglia's animated description of his patent. Clearly, the man's mind is elsewhere. But the inventor is undeterred. The clock is ticking. His patent expires in 2013.
Mike Hofman is a senior staff writer at Inc.
The Man Behind the Dome
As Art Battaglia rolls into his eighth year of trying to bring geodesic-laced athletic gear to market, one of his sources of inspiration is the life of R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller, the father of the geodesic structure -- yes, indeed, there was one -- was born in 1895 and couldn't see a damn thing until the age of four, when his flinty New England parents realized he needed eyeglasses. Like Battaglia, he was a man of enormous energy who was compelled from a very young age to change the world. At 19, Fuller dropped out of Harvard and joined the navy for the remainder of the First World War. Returning from the war, he moved from job to job and invention to invention. In 1954 he patented the geodesic dome, figuring it was a fine solution to the problem of designing sturdy low-income housing. "I didn't set out to design geodesic domes," Fuller once wrote. "I set out to discover the principles [operative in the] Universe. For all I knew, this could have led to a pair of flying slippers."
Fuller's daughter, Allegra Fuller Snyder, recalls that her father always seemed to have more clever ideas than he did dollars to make them happen. "My father was involved in starting two companies that I know of," she says. "One had to do with a kind of building block he developed with his father-in-law. That company was sold. My father considered it very much a failure." The other, which was a company to sell prefabricated circular houses, erected only one prototype structure. It was recently moved from Wichita to the property of the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Mich. That is fitting, Snyder says, because her father "enormously admired" Henry Ford -- not because he was a great businessman but because he did something that improved the lives of millions.
Despite his 27 patents, Fuller never became a rich man and always earned more in speaking fees than in royalties, Snyder says. "Maybe he would have been able to do more if he had had more money," she says, "but he didn't think about it that way at all."
As for Battaglia's scheme to use geodesic design in sports equipment, Snyder says, "I'm not an expert on geodesics, but they are known for their strength, and they do distribute impact all over. So anything of a protective nature, like a helmet, would probably benefit from that structure." Music to Art Battaglia's ears.
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