DocStoc Raises $3.25 Million in Series B Funding

DocStoc, an LA-based start-up that makes sharing and embedding documents simple, has raised $3.25 million in Series B funding from Rustic Canyon Partners. The company had raised an undisclosed amount of money earlier. The funds put the company on somewhat of an even playing field with competitor, Scribd, which has reportedly raised $3.5 million from Redpoint Ventures, and recently announced iPaper. In comparison with Scribd, DocStoc is focusing on sharing of “business and legal documents” that will eventually help the company get into the lucrative corporate market.

How to Trigger Great Ideas

By Brian Tracy
A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. There is something about a well-worded question that often penetrates to the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights.

Questions Stimulate Creative Thinking
Some of the best questions I’ve found for business problem solving are the following:

Clarify your desired result
Question #1: “What are we trying to do?” Whenever you become frustrated with slow progress for any reason, step back and ask this again and again.

Analyze your current methods
Question #2: “How are we trying to do it?” If you are experiencing resistance, perhaps your method is wrong. Be willing to objectively analyze your approach by asking, How are we trying to do it? Is this the right way? Could there be a better way? What if our method is completely wrong? How else could we approach it?

Could you be wrong?
Question #3: “Are we right?” It requires courage to face the possibility that you may be wrong, but it also leads to your seeing new possibilities. The rule is: Always decide what’s right before worrying about who’s right.

Question your assumptions
Question #4: “What are our assumptions” about the person, the product, the market or the business? Could we be assuming something that is incorrect? Time management expert Alec Mackenzie once wrote, “Errant assumptions lie at the root of every failure.”

What if your unspoken or implied assumptions were wrong? What would you have to do differently?

Put past decisions on trial
Another form of focused questioning is what I call “zero-based thinking.” This method requires that you regularly put every past decision on trial for its life by asking, “If I had not made this decision, knowing what I now know, would I make it?” If I had not hired this person or gotten involved in this project, knowing what I now know, would I do it over again?

If the answer is no to one of these questions, then your aim should be to get out of the decision as fast as possible. Be willing to cut your losses and try something else.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to trigger more and better ideas.

First, be very clear about exactly what it is that you are trying to do. Write it down and describe it as if it were already achieved.

Second, question your assumptions continually. What if there were a better way? Be willing to try something completely different.

Who gets the patent? The first one who markets a product ?

As for the patent issue, It's highly recommend that you talk to someone who knows the specifics of your idea and knows about the patent process, if not an actual patent lawyer. There are a lot of misconceptions about what kind of protection non-provisional and provisional patents offer. Also, you may get a patent granted but if it's not drafted well, someone could make a minor modification and not technically "infringe." A well-drafted patent by a good patent lawyer, however, can provide extremely good protection without being overly broad.

The U.S. patent and trademark office recognizes the first to invent, not the first to market. Going to market first helps in the sense that it strengthens your argument that you invented it first, but that argument can be refuted if the first person to invent has documentation of the date of their invention. That's why it's very important to keep a log of your invention, ideally from the first day you think of your idea. Write down all of your notes, keep track of receipts for materials, drawings, phone calls, names, dates, emails, etc.

Bottom line is read all you can and find a good patent lawyer!

Winning a Patent doesn't give an Inventor a License to Print Money!

A patent gives an inventor the right to keep others from making, selling or importing a unique design for 20 years from the date of the patent application. The invention must be new and useful or be an improvement on an existing device, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which issues patents.

But winning a patent doesn't give an inventor a license to print money - even if the patent is for a new-fangled printing press.

It's just the first step toward getting your invention into consumers' hands. Once a patent is issued, you'll need to develop a business plan, persuade investors to pump money into your company and license or sell your idea to a manufacturer.

Lonnie Johnson who's credited with inventing the Super Soaker water pistol and has patent No. 4,591,071 to prove it - learned this lesson more than 20 years ago when he got his first patent. He figured his phone would ring off the hook "from people wanting my invention. And, of course, that didn't happen."

To develop the Super Soaker, for example, he was told he'd have to pony up $200,000 to produce the first 1,000 - money he didn't have.

Eventually, Johnson licensed the design to a manufacturer that's now part of toy giant Hasbro.

Johnson, founder of Johnson Research & Development in Smyrna, Ga., earns a percentage of sales, which have totaled about $500 million so far. He declined to reveal the exact percentage.

For instance, a quick search for the word "wheel" in the Patent and Trademark Office database turns up 49,303 related patents just in the past 5 years. So it's best to see if someone has beaten you to the patent before you invest a lot of money.

Many inventors do patent searches by plunging into the Patent and Trademark Office's online database (www.uspto.gov).

But Richard Apley, head of the office's Independent Inventor programs, notes that patents are written in mind-numbing legalese. You may miss a patent if you don't use the right search terms.

For example, search for "water gun" and you won't find Johnson's patent, which is instead for a "squirt gun" that's "configured as a structure facilitating partial filling with water leaving a void for compressed air."

Huh?

That's why it makes sense to consider hiring a patent law attorney.

Legendary inventor Ron Popeil of Ronco Inventions has hawked spray-on toupees and food dehydrators in his ubiquitous TV infomercials and on home shopping channel QVC. His most successful so far: the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ. He recently sold 10,000 of the chicken roasters during a single QVC appearance.

Popeil, 66, recommends using patent attorneys, but only after inventors have first proved that there's consumer demand. File a provisional application with the Patent and Trademark Office for as little as $75. That gives a measure of protection for up to a year, Popeil says. Then you'll have that year to do further research before needing to file a formal application.

Patent attorneys charge $100 to $500 an hour, says David Lesht of Chicago law firm Cook Alex McFarron Manzo Cummings & Mehler, which specializes in intellectual property law. In the end, an inventor might pay $5,000 to $15,000 or more, Lesht says.

A list of nearly 26,000 lawyers qualified to practice before the Patent and Trademark Office is on the agency's Web site.

Johnson, 51, hired a patent attorney for his first invention to make sure the job was done right and to learn the process so he could do it himself.

Writing a patent application also taught him how to refine his inventions so they would better withstand legal challenges.

Watch out for scams

Companies known as invention-promotion firms promise to take ideas and turn them into reality, charging thousands of dollars along the way. They may claim they have relationships with manufacturers or expertise in market research. In reality, many are suspect operations, Apley says.

Ask the firm how many of its inventors made money. Check their references. And ask about the number of ideas they reject. Legitimate firms generally have high rejection rates, the patent office says.