Last week I spoke to a potential client who essentially asked me the question posed in the title: Now that I've invented something, what do I do next to protect my invention. Unfortunately, I needed to explain that, no, she didn't have an invention, she had an idea. An idea that, perhaps, with a bunch of development effort, might become an invention - in which case we could evaluate the pros and cons of filing a patent application.
We've all noticed problems in our daily lives and said something to the effect of "what is needed is a [fill in the blank] that would do [fill in the blank]. The difference between an idea and an invention is the difference between observing a need and filling that need. I wish my garden were lush and beautiful, but without a lot of sweat it will remain a weedy patch.
Previously, most people quickly passed from the idea stage to the "forget about it" stage as they realized A) they didn't know anything about how to implement their idea and B) they had no reason to think their idea would be a commercial success. More recently (this millennium), however, the very public, huge successes of certain ideas (think Google, Facebook, UTube), aided and abetted by television entertainment shows ("American Inventor" reality show, Good Morning America's "Mothers of Invention" contest) have changed people's perception of what they have. Novelty be damned, obviousness - what's that, let's patent this and make a bundle!
This desire to turn every idea into an invention is not limited to "amateurs". Often clever engineers get an ah ha moment and want to rush to the patent office. But again, without the usually hard effort of working through the details they often don't yet have an invention.
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