That's really what it comes down to isn't it? If you pour enough time, money and effort into just about anything, with the right marketing program in place you will have a million dollar product. Now that doesn't say it didn't cost you 2 million to get it. You have to acurately assess the profitablity of your innovation.

There are several factors that come into play when determining the profitability of your innovation. Your ability to reduce the invention to practice on your own, the cost of manufacture, and of course the projected MSRP tag. Before you can acurately determine these factors, you must know everything about what you are inventing.
What is it made of?

How will it be produced?
What are the associated tooling cost for manufacture?
What will be the average cost per unit?
What is the MSRP?
Will customers pay the MSRP you want?
What if they dont?

Your answers to these questions will determine the profitablity of your invention ultimately.

You might say that patenting a weapon wouldn't be useful because it is only used to kill, and that is not useful. You would however be wrong. Therein lies it's usefulness, it's a killing machine. If it does it's job at all, it it considered useful.

Anything that preforms a function, no matter how destructive will be considered useful. Due to the very fact that it works. This is also a two edged sword. If you have invented something that will save the world, but ifit doesn't work you should not expect to recieve a patent for it.

Not much, and that's what seems to be a source of irritation for many people. If you have developed a doomsday weapon or some sort of horrible innovation that it could deny the right to thrive to many, will it sit on the shelf? You have to make sure that it works right, and that's almost bound to happen. If you have a bent for developing this type of thing perhaps you should try to use your brilliant mind to devise defenses against it. If you don't, who will?

If at all possible, retain innovation in the positive areas. It is up to inventors to make the world a better place through innovation, and it's hard to do that while developing with negative intent.

There are people that develop negative intent innovation with the purpose of the positive. Thier wish is to develop systems of incredible danger to us all, and then lock them away from other who seek to do harm. They may work with authorities to give information about specific types of materials, matter etc. to watch supplies of and who is collecting them very much like has been done with nuclear weapons for decades.

If you find that your invention has already been patented, you will not be able to patent that device in the exact same embodiment. However, if after you have contemplated the claims of the competing patent and decide to design something different and better then by all means you may have several patents comming your way. Don't take it as immidiate bad news. Ask yourself, why didn't this product work out for it's inventor? Was it the prodcut itself, or the marketing? Am I very glad that I just saved so much money doing my research first? What will I do now, can I design around it? Would it be worth it if I did, or just the same product and not as good? Is there another product this could turn into, or be used as; What other markets might accept it? Is it a good idea for me right now to pursue this product any further?

These are questions, once again that only you know the answers to. If you dump enough money into anything it will fly, but is that the prudent thing for you to do right now? Maybe it is. Perhaps you happened onto the idea evolving into different markets, or multiple and better embodiments. If this is the case, you may well want to continue to pursue it. Know your limits, and know what you are capable of, and what you are not.

Prepare yourself for the task physically and mentally. If you have a terrible flu and think of something terriffic, this may not be the time to build models you should get some rest. Write it down of course in as much detail as is nessesary to 'jog' your memory about it. Point is, your physical body must be fit enough to complete tasks. You will be completing a lot of them. Prepare mentally by invisioning your invention being sold in it's ultimate forms. Marvel at the fact that if you do not produce this, maybe no one ever will. Then again there may be a guy in the lab next to you three doors down working on the same thing! Pouring heart and soul into it all day and night, and if you don't step on it he will beat you to the punch, you'll be out quite a bit of money and more importantly precious time.

Complete whatever steps you think are needed to prepare. Run marathons or eat healthy foods, whatever you like, but you have got to be ready for the challenge because it can be a long and hard won battle.

If you do not prepare yourself for failure you just might fail. If you havn't already imagined the failure of your invention and determined that that will not happen, you just might fail. You must examine yourself and your invention from all angles to determine how other people will see it and you. It may surprise you to find that you see certain things about your invetion that you will change for the better, simply because you took the time to examine how other people would think of it.

Let's get to it!