I was recently discussing inventions with a co-worker of mine when he suggested that I Google the description to see if the product already existed. “Oh no,” I said “they steal ideas from people. I don’t do that anymore!” He seemed confused, so I explained; search engines have been aware of this for years. They provide a neat little text input for users to type their search queries, and then they check the entire web to see if any matches occur. Well, that is just about as good as a patent search! And if the search string was a producible product idea, they can run with it and use their billions of dollars to hit the market first!
Why just last week I was searching for “chicken pasta”, because I thought what better way to make pasta more nutritious than to add chicken to it? You could still store it on the shelf, just add sauce and voila! Well, there were no matches, so I left work quite pleased with myself, and dreamt sweet dreams that night. The next morning I was trying to figure out how to spend the millions of dollars I was going to make licensing my idea to Tyson, when I saw a billboard being pasted up that read “Spaghetti just got better…for you! New Chicken Spaghetti!”
I don’t even remember who it was that claimed to have invented the product, but I knew they stole it from me as I typed it into my search engine. I never drove that way to work again, so devastated was I by this blow. How could I compete with such juggernauts who can turn a product in less than 24 hours? So be careful what you type, you never know who might be reading it.