One man’s idea will eliminate pixels from television screens, but he needs to know whether someone has already obtained a patent for the process he’s using.

Another man says he and his wife are developing cloth coverings for woodwind instruments, which will allow them to remain outside in bad weather during marching band competitions. He needs advice on how to obtain a patent.

Another man talks of cost-cutting measures and adjustments he’s made at the tool company where he works and asks whether he’s entitled to a cut of the thousands of dollars his company is saving off the machinery and processes he’s created.

It’s a Saturday afternoon in November, and the three men are gathered in a conference room at the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center on the north end of town with about seven or eight others who all are of similar ilk.

Some are quirky. Some are science geeks or machinists or tinkerers. Some are just regular everyday Joes. They share pizza. They share their experiences, their successes and their failures. And they all have an idea – or ideas.

Maybe it’s the next big thing, or maybe something that will make the world better, or something that will make them a lot of money.

Welcome to the Fort Wayne Inventors Club.

Once a month, about six to a dozen local inventors gather at the innovation center, on Stellhorn Road across from IPFW, and discuss everything that can go into the creation of a product. Where can they get a patent? Who can they talk to about marketing? Will this work?

Usually, someone in the group has a contact – a starting point for someone new to the game.

“When someone finds out you’ve invented something, typically the next sentence in the conversation is, ‘I’ve had this idea for a long time, but I don’t know how to patent or market it,’ ” said Dave Gross, a founder of the club.

That’s a big reason Gross, who is possibly set to become the club’s most successful inventor, started the club nearly five years ago – to give these people a forum and a space to bounce their ideas off one another and find their way.

Sitting in traffic

On the day after Thanksgiving in 1997, Gross, known as “Dr. Dave” on the radio where he is a DJ for WLDE-FM 101.7, was sitting in heavy traffic on Coliseum Boulevard near Glenbrook Square.

That’s when an ambulance, with its sirens blaring, began trying to maneuver through traffic. But because of constant red lights, the clogging of the lanes and the inability of other vehicles to get out of its way, the ambulance struggled to get through the congestion.

In his head that day, Gross came up with the first crude designs that would become “The Eliminator.”

With The Eliminator – which is the size of a typical GPS device in a car or truck – emergency vehicles can flip red traffic lights to green and send their location to other emergency vehicles, thereby avoiding collisions with each other.

Prototypes are being used in Indianapolis and St. Louis, and Gross’ company, Collision Control Communications, has a proposal for a town in Canada to begin using the product.

But it took Gross years to obtain a patent for his product, during which he had to fight a bigger company in a lawsuit and learned a lot of the ins and outs of inventing.

During a banquet dinner with other local inventors and innovators about 2005, Gross asked why there wasn’t a place where they could all get together on a regular basis to exchange ideas or help one another in how to market their products.

“We all had similar interests, similar mindsets, but we only had the opportunity to communicate with each other this one time,” Gross said of the banquet and his idea.

Thus, the club was born, somewhat modeled after a state inventor’s club in Indianapolis, only there are no dues. You just show up once a month, speak if you want and chow down on some free pizza Gross provides.

And such a club could not come at a better time for prospective inventors, as patent laws are set to change in the next few years, which in turn could dramatically change the landscape on who gets paid for their ideas.

Market vs. patent?

In the back of the conference room at the innovation center sits Steve Franks.

At heart he’s an entrepreneur, and while he has several projects in the works, he’s mainly the director of programs at the Innovation Center, which is set up to help budding entrepreneurs. He comes to the inventor’s club every week and updates the group’s blog during meetings.

During one young inventor’s questions about how to prove he invented a product, about how meticulous his notes must be when he takes his idea to a patent office, Franks interjects immediately with advice for all inventors there.

“I think it’s more important to make and sell and get your product out in the market instead of protecting your patent,” he said.

On many topics, Franks and Gross come from two different schools of thought. Gross believes you need to get your patent and you need to keep others from stealing your idea.

Franks believes any idea you might have – especially when it comes to technology – might become obsolete while the inventor toils through the lengthy patent process. Plus, obtaining a patent is expensive.

Better to get it out in the marketplace, to make all the money you can while you can, instead of worrying about the thousands of dollars you might sink into fees and costs from the United States Patent Office, according to Franks.

“I would much rather keep that money to invest in marketing,” he said.

With new laws looming, local and individual inventors might have no choice but to heed Franks’ advice.

In the past, those who invented something first – and could prove they did so – won almost any patent war. But new federal laws taking effect in 2013 are changing the United States from a “first to invent” country to a “first to file” country.

That means the first to file an idea with the patent office is usually the one who ends up owning the patent.

This change will eliminate the chance for individual inventors to come up with an idea, keep it relatively secret while attracting investors to pay for the patent expenses and taking the time to develop the product, according to one local lawyer.

“It almost doesn’t matter when you invented it,” said Jeremy Gayed, a patent attorney with the Fort Wayne law firm Barrett & McNagny. “For local inventors, this is a significant disadvantage because you have to rush to the patent office quickly.”

The laws are still new, having been signed in by President Obama in September, and many patent lawyers are just beginning to learn all of the regulations’ fine print, Gayed said.

Still, it’s another reason an organization like the Fort Wayne Inventor’s Club might be needed. At November’s meeting, Gross provided numerous connections to a new visitor. So did Franks. Need a patent agent? They knew of one. Need to talk to a marketer? They knew of one of those, too.

And Gross is ready to offer any help he can, having been through the process, and knowing the pitfalls inventors might fall into if they aren’t ready. While obtaining his patent, he had to fight a major corporation – and he won.

It saved him hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, he said. But he also said he was able to verify all his notes from the beginning of the idea, and if he had not been able to do that, he might’ve just given up.

Everyone must decide, at some point, how far they’re willing to take their invention, according to Gross.

“There’s a lot of judgment calls you have to make early on that dictates the path you make,” he said.

jeffwiehe@jg.net