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Old 10-22-2014, 04:54 PM   #13
mikefocke
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Sanford NC
Posts: 2,533
I managed a patent application as the lead (although I didn't design the product) and the application took every bit of 2 years from first submission to our lawyers to final approval. I think we spent probably $100k in lawyer fees even though all the technical product description writing and some of the legal arguments were authored by in-house staff. I'd guess probably $50k of our time and all these costs were in 7 years ago dollars.

As a former product manager of a relatively low volume product, I have an appreciation for the overheads that have to be built into pricing. Production is probably the least of the expenses, or was in our case. Things like marketing, documentation, support and warranty were easily more in a given year than component cost.
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