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Roger Maxwell can walk and talk today because of a patent application, and the curious thing is that the patent application that saved him wasn’t even his.

Six months after he was married at age 49, Maxwell - a patent attorney - suffered a stroke which left him in a wheelchair and unable to speak, except for two-syllable words. He credits searching published patent applications, which are all public records, with his discovery of supplements and techniques that helped him recover. After his recovery, he wrote Taking Charge of Your Stroke Recovery: A Personal Recovery Workbook (www.rogermaxwell.com), which included some of the programs and techniques he learned from researching patents.

“In looking at patents, I discovered the secrets of supplements, like Omega 3s, that boosted my body’s ability to heal itself,” he said. “After two years of physical therapy, yoga and supplements - and after being told I would never walk or speak normally again - I found myself running a marathon and starting a business as a motivational speaker. After that experience, I thought if the secrets hidden in patent applications could help me recover from a stroke, imagine what it could do for people looking for new ideas not only for their own lives, but also for business and innovation.”

Along his road to recovery, Maxwell learned that patent applications are a hidden repository of the next big ideas that will hit the market and change our lives. There is a vast amount of information available through these applications, and the good news, according to Maxwell, is that they are all public records and free.

“There is no way,” he noted, “that anyone can ‘infringe’ a patent application that has not received final approval from a technical expert. When people file for patents, they have to make the case for why their idea is so unique that it deserves a patent, and that includes any testing or studies to support their claims. Many of them and much of what they say can be freely used. Moreover, there are millions of patents filed prior to January 1990 that have expired, and any information or ideas in those documents can be freely used commercially.”

According to Maxwell, patent applications can be extremely useful in both your personal and professional lives:

• You can find the next big thing - Patent applications talk about upcoming products. You can find out about a company’s upcoming products by looking at their patent applications.
• You can say and write better things - With the information in patents, you can be more “intelligent.”
• You can design better products - Patent applications tell people what can be included in a product, and the most effective ways to do things.
• You can conduct business intelligence research at your desk - You can determine what companies are in a business, what a company is doing, and what a company thinks is the best approach is for making or using a product.
• You can make money - You can get a valuable patent, use it to monopolize a market, or find a sales or licensing target for the patent.
• You can protect yourself - Smart business people know that patents can keep competitors at bay and ensure that any dispute is favorably resolved.

“The information age can be overwhelming, with what seems to be limitless information available on any given topic at the click of a Google search, but the truth is that those searches are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The soul of American innovation, the creativity of the inventor’s mind and the lifeblood of our growth as a nation are all hidden inside these patent documents. The next big thing, the next new idea, the next world-changing concept is there, and available to anyone who asks for it.”