Boy’S Invention Runs Into Patent Problems
Dustin Hicks tries not to think about the people he could have saved this year. It makes him too sad.
Fourteen, says his mother, Shari Hicks, who’s kept track of every person lost hiking, hunting or having fun in the region’s backcountry. Dustin closes his serious blue eyes a moment.
A year ago when he was 12, the Spirit Lake boy invented Safe-T-Rite, a fat, waterproof crayon that marks on trees, rocks, glass or just about anything. Dustin figured his marker would help people in distress leave emergency messages for rescuers.
His invention won him attention, prizes, even a trip to Florida to appear on a Nickelodeon game show. But it hasn’t achieved what he wants most: a patent.
A patent would protect the marker from copycats and enable Dustin to market it. Then, people beyond his family and friends would have some protection in the woods.
“It really bothers him greatly to have this product that would help so many, and not be able to get it out there,” Shari says.
Several factors combined to inspire Dustin’s invention. The father of a family friend died in the Shoshone County woods. George Saunders, 54, was on a hunting trip with his stepson, Mike Brown, in November 1996 when his truck slid off the road.
The two men separated to find help. Brown found his way to safety. Saunders’ body wasn’t found until spring.
A few months later, Dustin began hunting. His mother worried. She wanted him to carry a note in a plastic bag so he could pin a message on a tree if he got lost.
At about the same time, Dustin’s fifth-grade teacher assigned his class science projects. It all led Dustin to Safe-T-Rite.
“I thought about George being lost,” Dustin says. “And I was thinking: Instead of carrying a note (while hunting), I needed something like an ink pen or marker that would last.”
He began combining ingredients in a pot on the stove. It didn’t surprise Shari.
“He’s been a builder forever,” she says. “He made a pulley and tried to ride it when he was 7. I used to go to Goodwill and buy him blenders to take apart.”
In two days of experiments, Dustin arrived at an oil paint-based concoction that hardens as it dries. It marked on anything and repelled water but was removable with rubbing alcohol.
Dustin’s Safe-T-Rite won his school’s Invention Convention, then took third at the regional show. At the state competition, it took best of show.
A lawyer in Boise volunteered to help with the first phase of patenting Safe-T-Rite, a search of current patents for anything similar. It costs a minimum of $5,000.
While the lawyer searched, Dustin improved his invention. He added a glow-in-the-dark element and explained his product on KHQ-TV’s “Circle of Friends” show.
With marketing savvy well beyond his years, Dustin also applied to be a contestant on Nickelodeon’s “Family-Style Figure It Out.” Within a week, he was invited to Orlando, Fla., to try to stump four young stars with his secret inventing talent.
Dustin puzzled the Nickelodeon stars for two rounds of questioning and won a mountain bike and a Nintendo 64. But the stars finally guessed his talent and aced the Hicks family out of a grand prize trip to Busch Gardens.
This fall, Dustin’s parents decided to spend $2,500 on a more in-depth search of patents. In his second search, the lawyer found a glow-in-the-dark crayon.
“That’s what’s giving us grief,” Shari says. “But ours is paint-based and theirs is wax-based. Ours marks on trees and theirs doesn’t.”
To apply for patents costs $750. The fee is nonrefundable. The lawyer cautioned the Hicks family that they could lose their money if the patent office finds the glow-in-the-dark crayon close enough to Safe-T-Rite.
Shari says her family will copyright the name, then decide whether to pursue a patent. The process could run into the tens of thousands of dollars, which is more than her family bargained on.
While the adults struggle over money and paperwork, Dustin will continue to hand out his marker to friends and carry it with him when he hunts. He’s too smart to become another sad statistic.