First I should tell you the author, Bob DeMatteis, has a 100% success rate in licensing his patents -- that's pretty damn good considering that on average less than 2% of patents make anybody any money. But now the bad news, prior to going independent he was employed as a product developer in the bag industry he invents for. That's not "bad news" for Bob, of course, but it could be "bad news" for you if you don't understand why Bob's proven techniques might not work for you.

It's not that the techniques in this book don't work -- they do work beautifully -- but if you are a truck driver, for example, and have a great idea for a 100 mile-per-gallon carburetor -- but know little about the auto and engine industry -- then applying Bob's techniques could be nearly impossible for you. But Bob also draws on the expertise of other inventors in the book so the general material and many of the specifics should be very useful to you.

Start with Bob's "first secret to successful inventing: The first secret to successfully bringing your idea to fruition is that you, the inventor, must pilot your own invention. You have to be in charge of your own dream. You can't turn your dream over to someone else and expect results. You will have help and will team up with experts along the way, but you must always maintain control of your invention's destiny."

Of course the second secret is you have to "master the process required to be an expert pilot inventor" and that is what the book teaches in great detail. There are solid sections on inventing, patenting, manufacturing, marketing, and, of course, licensing. But first you have to work through the very important preliminaries including understanding the field you'll be in, understanding that making money -- not getting a patent or improving society -- is the objective, and that having fun is essential.

Chapter 1 carefully takes you through the evaluation process you need to do while your "invention" is still just at the idea stage and before any money is spent on it. But don't think that when you pass that evaluation you are home free. Chapter 2 and 3 get you farther into the game but also throw more and more evaluation criteria at you and then suddenly take a turn and put you face to face with the scariest boogie man you'll ever meet, gasp..., the customer. You'll learn what "CDI" is and why it is so important to success. Big companies lose sight of "CDI" all the time and it costs them billions of dollars a year -- for some companies the failure even causes death. A fate you hopefully can avoid by studying From Patent to Profit.