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Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

By Lauren Weber, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Apr. 17--Long Island has long been a hub of innovation, spawning success stories as varied as corporate giants Grumman and Symbol Technologies, and Huntington-raised Joy Mangano, creator of the Miracle Mop and Huggable Hangers.

Rarely has that creative ferment been more on display than at the American Invention Forum, a one-day seminar at Farmingdale State University of New York earlier this month that covered topics ranging from patents to licensing to attracting investment capital. The goal, said conference organizer Savio Chan, was to help these tinkerers reap dollars from their ideas.

"A lot of inventors are very smart and very creative, but they're not very strong on the other side of the brain - sales and marketing," said Chan, who is chief executive of U.S.-China Partners, a Melville-based company that connects small businesses with factories and other resources in China. "This event was made to bridge that gap."

Almost 98,000 patents were granted to U.S. inventors in 2004, according to the Patent and Trademark Office. New Yorkers got 7 percent of those, second only to Californians.

The seminar drew more than 120 aspiring inventors from Long Island and around the country. What they had in common was a single phrase: "I've got a great idea." In fact, Matthew Harrigan has books full of great ideas, he says. The Smithtown native, now living in Douglaston, has conceived gloves to protect the hands of wheelchair riders, paints for drawing on snow and a shower contraption to capture the dregs in a bottle of shampoo.

His current project is an exercise machine called the SkateTrak, a small, stationary track for in-line skates. Harrigan, 42, has built several prototypes but buried the latest version in his closet for six years after failing to land a licensing deal. He recently heard about the seminar and had to renew his patents, so he decided to dust off the machine and give it another try.

Harrigan, who publishes several real estate circulars, couldn't attend the forum but sent his father in his stead. Reached by telephone, he said, "I'd like to be able to invent for a living if I could. But that's a long road. You see guys, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, divorce their wives. ... But it might not happen for them."

David Bingham, 62, tries not to think that way. A retired mechanic and automotive industry expert from Oxford, Mich., he has created a gear he says increases a car's fuel efficiency by 3 to 6 percent. He's invested more than $150,000 in the idea, including about $1,500 to come to Long Island for the forum.

A lot of nibbles, no takers

"I've been interviewed by about 300 companies. So far, nobody has said they want to produce it," he said. His next step? Adapt the gear for use in a fishing reel. Perhaps that application will be the moneymaker, and if not, Bingham says there are many others.

The keynote speaker at the seminar was Robert Monti, a Ronkonkoma native who's a vice president of operations at the Home Shopping Network. He ran through the basic steps of bringing an invention to market, from testing a product's feasibility to writing a business plan.

When it comes to protecting the intellectual property - the idea and design - "keep an accurate, detailed log of all your work: notes, contacts, actions, drawings, descriptions. The more detail, the better," he said.

Monti said he's been approached by enthusiastic inventors at the beach, on airplanes, on trains. All are convinced their product will change the world and turn them into overnight millionaires.

Being perky can backfire

But often that enthusiasm and confidence is not enough, and sometimes it's even off-putting to investors, noted Jeffrey Seltzer, managing partner at Pierce Yates Ventures, a venture capital firm in Old Westbury. Seltzer and his team scrutinize inventors' financial projections and pay particular attention to certain items.

"We ask, What's the compensation structure? We like inventors to take a lot of stock and put the cash back into the company. If you're looking to make a big salary, I'm not very interested in the deal," said Seltzer, who gave a presentation about finding angel investors.

All of the speakers celebrated the spirit of innovation and creativity that drove so many people to a drab lecture hall on a rainy Saturday morning.

"I'm inspired to be able to spend my time with creative people," Monti said. But he cautioned that there's a big difference between an idea and a successful invention. "Ideas are perishable," he said. "If they're not acted upon, they'll go bad."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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