Part 2: Patent & Early Feedback

Patent-pending design with spring plungers, shown from the rear of the seat.

I provided my hand drawn sketches to the patent attorney and had professional sketches created. I filed a provisional patent for our unique design. I elected to file a provisional patent. A provisional patent means you have your place in line for your idea, but the patent will not be reviewed by the patent office. You have one year from the date of filing to move the patent to non-provisional status which puts the patent in line for review. Filing a provisional patent allows you to make “minor” changes to your filing before it is reviewed. I elected to do this because everything at this point was conceptual. I have an engineering back ground and experience in manufacturing, but not in bike seats. I needed to find a manufacturer and I wanted to be able to tweak the patent so it reflected the seat we would manufacture if we ever got that far. The application is still pending.

With the patent filed, I showed the professionally created patent sketches to bike enthusiasts, repair shop owners, and rental shops. The response was consistent. They thought it was a great idea and encouraged me to move forward.

The next step was the real world. Even after the patent research, I wanted to ride anything close to the idea and see what worked. If something on the market already did this well, I wanted to learn from it. If not, I was ready to build and test the first prototypes.