You'd also have to check the terms of your employment contract - it's very common for employers to claim ownership of all "work product" produced for them. On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 11:21 AM, Iznogoud <iznogoud at nobelware.com> wrote: > Great stuff! Glad to see this kind of stuff created. And a noble cause. > > You may want to talk to a patent attorney (I know this is not helping much). > Perhaps you can give a call to the Office of Technology Commercialization at > the Univ. of Minnesota and ask questions. As a Land-grant institution, they > are supposed to be helping the public. > > Alternatively, to see if there is any money to be made there, you can talk to > a "venture capital" firm, ask them to partner with you under an NDA, and see > if they are interested in doing the market research on your behalf. > > Patent application fees can exceed $5k, if I recall correctly. It will also > take some time, and there are no guarantees that you will receive a patent. > > A more interesting and daring path would be to approach SmartThings and see > if they are interested. You may have to swap some pieces out for using their > technology, or they can straight-up buy it. Just a thought. > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list