Market research: prior art risk?

[McMartin]

Question re doing market research.

If I go to internet discussion forums used by my target market, and solicit feedback on general design questions (and the need for it) to help improve my product and enhance its marketability, do I risk creating prior art or otherwise create obstacles to my authorship of the invention based on suggestions I might obtain?

The idea at this point exists only in my head.

Thanks.

[Brad]

Yes.  This could be risky.  The safest course of action is to file a provisional application first, then solicit general feedback, then file an updated patent application if/as needed.   

Anyone who contributes ideas that are in your claimed invention should be listed as an "inventor" on a patent application so ideally you will try to flush out as many variations as you can all by yourself then get feedback on those variations.  This way you are the inventor for them and the other people are just letting you know which ones would be most useful to them.   

[McMartin]

Thanks for the reply.

That's what I figured.  I don't suppose some sort of disclaimer/waiver paragraph would cut it?

I am of two polar minds on this one: it's either brilliant or stoopid.

[Brad]

I don't think there is a right answer to this.  In general if you could get some sort of broad or generic protection on the concept/idea and then use market testing to further refine that idea into specific designs your first generic patent (if written well enough) should cover small design changes.

In my opinion the patent process should follow or come second to your business strategy so if you think it would be best for your business to do market testing and try to get input from end users I would move ahead with that and hope that you can get some sort of broad or generic patent that would cover the different design changes.