Ideas to reality Georgia inventors whose patents still hold  BY RANDY SOUTHERLAND
At least since the first rotation of the wheel, innovators have been seeking ways to meet needs and solve problems. That has produced an endless stream of original ideas that have created new markets and even empires. Some build a better mousetrap or produce inventions that revolutionize the way we live such as the car or telephone. Each seems to start with a problem and an idea. Jeffrey Grossman remembers the day several years ago when he became an inventor. He was a young resident at a large Veterans Affairs hospital learning to master the art of epidural steroid injections into a patient’s spine to control pain. After taking X-rays to locate the right area, the doctor inserted a long needle into a precise location at just the right trajectory with no room for deviation. The procedure required extensive knowledge coupled with precise hand/eye coordination. Even experienced doctors took three or four tries before finding the right spot, and inexperienced residents often repeated the procedure a dozen times or more—all while the patient lay on the table, awake and under local anesthesia. “I remember telling the attending physician ‘they should have something that guides the needle,’” recalls Grossman. He assumed the device must exist somewhere. When he discovered it didn’t, Grossman decided to build one himself. After months of trial and error, including drawing diagrams, buying materials such as rifle scopes and consulting with other physicians, he constructed a working model of a laser-guided alignment device. His first experiment involved doing an epidural injection on a frozen chicken. With continual refinements, the device worked. Instead of a dozen tries, an injection could be done right the first time.  A large medical device company bought rights to the invention, and Grossman uses it in his own practice at Peachtree Spine Physicians in Atlanta. He’s written a book on the invention process, “Innovative Doctoring: Solutions Lie Within Us,” to encourage physicians to be more creative in their practice of medicine.
"Many people see problems, but the real test is taking the next step and doing something about it—finding a solution,” says Grossman. More and more people, encouraged by Public Broadcasting’s “Everyday Edisons” and “American Inventor,” an ABC reality show, are perfecting new inventions, getting patents and trying to take them to market. Some, like Grossman, sell their ideas to big companies while others dream of running their own business. "Our group has really been exploding in size,” says Dave Savage, president of the Inventors Association of Georgia, about his professional group for inventors and service providers based in Atlanta. While thinking up new inventions may require little more than time and brain power, turning an idea into a tangible product can be daunting. For one thing, it costs money to take an idea beyond a sketch on a napkin. “It’s an expensive endeavor if you want to bring the product to life,” says Jim Debetta, president of Marietta-based Decavi Corp., a sales and marketing company that helps inventors sell products to large retailers. “It can get costly with legal fees. You have to package your product and get samples and prototypes made, and eventually you are going to have to bring the product in and pay for it. Even if you want to license your product you have to have business plans, and you just have to be really prepared to do business, and that comes with a price.” Debetta estimates that only one out of 10 inventors actually sees their idea make it to market. Most don’t have the energy, connections or dollars to do all the work that’s required. Sometimes they’re just too ahead of their time. The ones who do succeed usually get help from companies that can provide design, engineering and manufacturing services such as Slingshot Product Design Group in Lawrenceville. While most of their clients are Fortune 500 companies, about 20 percent are small-time inventors. "Our core strength is innovation,” says President Sam Zaidspiner. Many inventors come to them after filing a patent and then realize they don’t know what to do next. They don’t know how to create a prototype and have never heard of a nondisclosure agreement. Slingshot offers services such as a team of engineers and graphic designers that can take them as far as they’re willing or able to go with the product. That might be a prototype they can show to venture capitalists or eventually a finished product. The company provides skills the inventor lacks.
 Wet/dry shaver
Those who push ahead can achieve both success and recognition. Irving Silver of Sandy Springs, for example, built a highly successful career as an auto salesman before coming up with the idea of a turbine-operated wet/dry shaver. “I must have built hundreds of prototypes that failed,” says Silver, now semiretired. “The blades got stuck. The charger, the turbine, the shaft got stuck on it. There were continually changes until it was what you would call basically foolproof before I sold the patent.” He launched his own company and then came up with a machine that allowed travelers to get shaves in airports. His design is now used by all the major shaving companies and was even taken into space by U.S. astronauts.
 Save the Chairs
Regardless of how difficult the path may be, inventors usually don’t want to do anything else. “The inventor part of me is just who I am, and the legal part of me generally is there to support my inventions,” says Karen Nadler-Sachs, an Atlanta attorney who recently started a company called Save the Chairs. Her latest invention is a new kind of slipcover for chairs. She came up with the idea while feeding her toddler and spilling baby food on a prize chair. Nadler-Sachs is one of those rare inventors who decided to start her own company rather than sell the idea to a big corporation. This way, she can ensure that everything is done right. “I want to be involved with the whole thing from the design right down to the last stitch on the manufacturing process,” she says.
Patent pending Inventors often face lengthy struggles to gain recognition. Dr. W. Henry Wall, a Dunwoody oral surgeon, is a veteran inventor with 20 patents to his credit, but one of his biggest ideas nearly cost him everything as he fought competing claims from other inventors and the world’s largest corporations. Wall invested two decades and more than $1 million in proving that he was the inventor of the heart stent—a tiny metal scaffold inserted into coronary arties to treat heart disease. He first submitted a patent application in 1984 listing 42 details of the invention including a design and the method by which doctors now implant them in patients. Today, the stent is one of the most frequently used medical devices reaping more than $20 billion for the companies that make them. While others have gotten rich, Wall never collected a cent. For reasons that aren’t clear, his application languished in the U.S. patent office for 18 years and was lost for seven. In the meantime, other inventors came up with an identical design, which was introduced in 1994. Wall tried to market his design to medical device companies, but each told him it wasn’t possible for a dentist to invent a coronary device. A lot of companies said no—74 in all. Then things began to change. After considerable pushing, the patent office found the lost patent and finally declared him the original inventor of the stent. That got everyone’s attention. “You never give up, and you have to keep excellent records, and you never give up,” declares Wall. While his patent doesn’t give him claim to the revenue stent makers have amassed over the past decade, it does apply to U.S. sales after his patent was issued. It also gives him control over who sells his stent. Since then, companies that once snubbed the Georgia dentist are talking to him. He won’t say what the outcome will be, but, now vindicated, he expects to complete negotiations in the next few months.
 The Dream Cart
Without a doubt, inventors are tinkerers and problem-solvers. They like finding easier ways to do things. Daryl Molliere, who works for Hart Electric Membership Corp. in Hartwell, was hunting a big buck deep in the backwoods of Elbert County when he realized that getting an animal out would be tough without a vehicle. Back in his shop, he built a two-wheeled cart to haul his prize. Then he realized his invention could be a lot more. Over the next several weeks he redesigned the cart to double as a deer stand, a cargo rack, lounge chair, cot, and, of course, a great hauler for the woods, garden or beach. "One thing just led to another and led to another,” says Molliere, who dubbed his invention The Dream Cart. He’s made a dozen of them for customers and is now looking for a company that can mass produce his patented invention.
 SnacDaddy
Becoming a successful inventor often means finding just the right support—whether it’s technical expertise, encouragement or money. Brent Anderson and Russ Stanziale of Atlanta found all those things on their TV dial. The two had come up with an innovative solution to a pressing dining problem: What to do with the bones after eating chicken wings. “There is a mess that’s left behind,” says Anderson. “So hiding it is the obvious piece of it, and I guess it was obvious to Russ and me but not obvious to a lot of others.” The answer is a plastic tray called the SnacDaddy, designed to hold chicken wings around an outer ring while the bones are placed in a center hole out of sight. Research shows that people order and eat more wings if the bones can be deposed of quickly without piling up on the table. The idea was good enough to win the pair a spot on PBS’s “Everyday Edisons,” which helped them turn their rough ideas into a marketable product. The show provided them with access to patent attorneys, prototyping services and capital.
For the dedicated inventor, ideas are like children. You nurture and protect them no matter what the cost until one day they are ready to go forth on their own. That’s the day they make you a proud parent. Randy Southerland is a freelance writer in Acworth.
Resources for the inventor • Decavi Corp., helps small companies and inventors sell to large retailers—www.decavicorp.com • Articles and resources for inventors—www.ideanextstep.com • Information and resources for inventors and companies looking for inventors’ ideas and creations—www.ideatango.com • Inventors Association of Georgia, meets the fourth Saturday of every month. Includes inventors and service providers—www.georgiainventors.com • Invent Now, a nonprofit organization that created the National Inventors Hall of Fame—www.invent.org • Market Launchers, connects inventors with companies looking for things to sell—www.marketlaunchers.com • National Association of Patent Practitioners, a nonprofit organization for patent practitioners—www.napp.org • Slingshot Product Development Group, a full-service product design and development company—www.slingshotpdg.com • United States Patent and Trademark Office: You can search patents issued since 1790 to see if someone has beaten you to the punch. Your next step is filing a provisional patent application, but for that you’ll need legal assistance—www.uspto.gov | 
