After Neil's week 19 lecture, I learned and re-learned much regarding patents, copyrights, trademarks, and income. The assignment this week is to include the production of a slide and a video. All I have at my disposal is a Macbook and an iPhone. I do not own, or know how to use a video camera, nor have I ever edited a video. This was not a week to catch up on the final project. This week required me to learn a whole new set of skills without much help. The other part of this week's assignment is to develop a plan for dissemination of your final project.
My project should peek interest from the wine industry. I first want to refine the product even further, make it more reliable and rugged. I do want to be able to claim real experience with the product, and demo the product to some well known wine industry experts who write articles and/or blogs. A feature article in a trade magazine such as Wines & Vines would be very helpful. I also would like to reach out to wine tank manufacturers and see if they would like to make it part of their equipment offering.
I don't plan on patenting the product. I rather copyright the product. Easier and cheaper to implement, and cheaper to defend.
I plan on working with other developers on different applications for this device. I have decided to not openly license the product because I have not verified if I have infringed on other work. There is some competitive products you can find on Omega Engineering as well as Davis Instruments. O2 sensors range from $300 to well over $5000 and do not work quite the same way as my device. Most have preset range and just throw an alarm noise. I plan on my product to be completely integrated in solving a particular problem. Devices such as the Oxygen Analyzer below, still requires an inegrator to come in and cobble this device to a PLC. And when it malfunctions, the integrator has to come in. This is expensive and impractical for small to medium winemakers. I don't think there is a tremendously large market for this device. However, I will probably have my board manufactured by a PCB board service. I believe the closest thing I may see as a license is a manufacturer or a distributor asking for exclusive rights.
I plan on my device to be similarly priced to the CO Transmitter device above. If something doesn't work, the winery can send the device back via UPS while I send a replacement. I have used the copyright notice in the end of this webpage which IO plan on making part of the project.
Please click below to view my summary slide and video:
