After featuring more than 800 founder journeys, Devin Miller is taking the hot seat on Inventive Journey. This episode introduces a new direction for the show: weekly updates on his own experience building Miller IP Law, pursuing other business ventures, and working through the decisions that come with entrepreneurship.

The story starts with electrical engineering at Brigham Young University, a two-year religious mission in Taiwan, and adding Mandarin Chinese as a second major. Devin enjoyed technology, but he also wanted variety, involvement in business decisions, and the chance to work with different inventions.

His solution was to pursue a joint law degree and MBA at Case Western Reserve University. With a young family and a part-time law-clerk position already on his schedule, he also joined a university business competition. Spare time was something other people had.

🏆 A GYM BAG, A MARATHON, AND TWO SECOND-PLACE FINISHES

The first competition involved a less smelly gym bag concept developed with three teammates. The second brought a different idea: a wrist-worn hydration-monitoring device inspired by a marathon where Devin struggled with dehydration.

Over Christmas break, Devin and his dad, an electrical engineer with medical-device experience, built an early prototype. Devin returned to Cleveland and tested it while exercising, collecting data with a setup that was far from a polished consumer watch.

After another second-place finish, he bought out his teammates’ interests and continued the project beyond graduation.

💧 BUILDING THE WEARABLE BUSINESS

Back in Utah, Devin started his legal career while continuing to build the business with his dad and others. Part-time work eventually gave way to raising investment and bringing people on full-time.

The team developed a wrist-worn prototype and a patent portfolio Devin recalls reaching roughly 30 to 40 patents. Moving toward a manufacturable product required further resources and decisions.

An opportunity involving a diabetes-focused business opened a new direction. The transition included a new business, licensing arrangements, and people taking on different roles.

⚖️ STARTING MILLER IP LAW

While working on technologies for large companies, Devin found himself especially drawn to startups and small businesses. He enjoyed working closely with founders and helping them think through practical decisions.

That preference led him to start Miller IP Law. Building the firm involved marketing, sales, hiring, and operations alongside client work and his ongoing involvement in the wearable venture.

💼 THE EXIT, WITH THE IMPORTANT DETAIL INCLUDED

Devin later sold his ownership stake. The overall outcome for the original group involved was in the eight-figure range. His personal proceeds were not eight figures.

The exit created room to focus more on the firm, other opportunities, and businesses with his kids. It also illustrates how a founder’s role can change as a venture develops.

🔑 IN THIS EPISODE

• Why Devin combined engineering, law, and business.
• How a personal frustration inspired a product idea.
• What two competition experiences taught him.
• Why the business eventually needed dedicated people.
• The gap between a functional prototype and a manufacturable product.
• How his interest in smaller clients shaped Miller IP.
• What listeners can expect from the show’s new direction.

🎙️ FOLLOW THE NEXT CHAPTER

Upcoming episodes will revisit mistakes, lessons, and decisions from earlier ventures while sharing current updates on Miller IP and other projects. Devin will also discuss how AI is affecting the legal industry and the work happening inside his firm.

Follow the journey over time, including lessons that rarely fit neatly into an origin story.

To chat about this one-on-one, grab a free consult at strategymeeting.com

🧭 How to Design Around an Existing Patent

You have the idea. You sketch it, refine it, maybe build a prototype, and then search for similar patents.

Then you find one.

Someone else appears to have patented something close to your invention.

In this episode, we break down what it means to design around an existing patent and why finding similar prior art does not automatically mean your invention is dead. Designing around a patent is about understanding what the patent actually claims, identifying the legal boundaries, and developing a product, process, or system that takes a genuinely different path.

We start with one of the most important concepts: patent claims. The title, abstract, drawings, and description can all be useful, but the claims define the legal scope of the patent. If you want to understand whether your product may overlap with an existing patent, you need to analyze those claims carefully.

That is also why a basic Google search is not enough.

We discuss Freedom to Operate searches, often called FTO searches, and how they help inventors and businesses identify patents and published applications that may create commercialization risk. A strong FTO process can uncover relevant patent families, competitors, active rights, and related filings that might not appear through obvious keyword searches.

Maybe a required component can be removed. Maybe a step can be reordered. Maybe a mechanical solution can be replaced with software. Sometimes the best question is not, “How do we make this look different?” but, “How do we solve the same business problem in a different way?”

The episode also covers prosecution history, including amendments, examiner rejections, prior-art arguments, and statements made while the patent was being examined. Those records can help reveal how claim scope evolved and where important limitations may have been added.

Related foreign filings can be useful too because patent owners may make different arguments or pursue different claims in other jurisdictions. Those records may provide extra strategic context, even though they do not automatically control interpretation of a U.S. patent.

We also explain why literal claim language is not always the end of the infringement analysis. The doctrine of equivalents can sometimes create risk when a substituted feature is not identical to a claimed element but is still considered legally equivalent. Changing one part and giving it a new name does not necessarily make the problem disappear.

Another major topic is the difference between patentability and freedom to operate.

You may be able to obtain a patent on an improvement and still need permission to practice technology covered by an earlier patent. Your patent may protect the improvement, while the earlier patent may still cover a broader concept that your product uses.

That is why obtaining your own patent is not the same thing as receiving permission to sell your product.

We also discuss the business side of design-around strategy. A clever redesign is not very useful if it doubles manufacturing costs, hurts reliability, destroys customer experience, or delays launch. The best design-arounds balance legal risk, engineering feasibility, cost, timing, and commercial value.

Sometimes licensing is the smartest move. Sometimes waiting for a patent to expire makes sense. Sometimes the right answer is to redesign and create a new intellectual property position of your own.

And sometimes the patent you first saw as an obstacle ends up pushing you toward a better invention.

If you are an inventor, startup founder, or small business owner trying to understand how your product fits into an existing patent landscape, this episode will help you think more strategically about what to do next.

To chat about this one-on-one, grab a free consult at strategymeeting.com

A patent can represent years of work, legal expense, engineering, testing, and plenty of frustration. Once that patent is granted, a big question often follows: can you sell it?

Yes. A patent is intellectual property, and patent rights can generally be transferred to another party through an assignment. For inventors who do not want to manufacture, market, distribute, or build a company around their invention, selling can be a practical way to turn an intellectual property asset into cash.

But selling a patent is not the same as licensing one—and that difference can have a major impact on your future upside.

In this episode, we break down what inventors and business owners should understand before deciding whether to sell, license, or hold a patent. We look at assignments, ownership, valuation, licensing, brokers, and the business tradeoffs behind each option.

Why might an inventor sell? Maybe commercialization requires more capital, manufacturing capacity, distribution, regulatory work, or industry relationships than you have—or maybe you simply prefer inventing to operating a business.

Selling can create liquidity and shift much of the commercialization burden to a buyer that already has the infrastructure to move faster.

The tradeoff is control. Once ownership is transferred, the inventor may lose the ability to license the patent, enforce it, control commercialization, or participate in future profits unless the agreement preserves those benefits. If the buyer later builds a huge business around the invention, the seller may be watching from the sidelines.

That is why licensing deserves serious consideration.

A license can let another company commercialize patented technology while the inventor keeps ownership. Compensation may include upfront fees, royalties, milestones, minimum payments, or a combination. Licensing can also be divided by territory, market, product category, or field of use.

Of course, licensing is not free money wearing a business suit. Licensees can underperform. Royalty reports need monitoring. Contracts may need enforcement. Product launches can fail. Retaining ownership can also mean retaining administrative headaches.

We also discuss patent brokers and why some inventors use intermediaries to identify potential buyers. A good broker may help package the opportunity, reach buyers, and negotiate a transaction. Inventors should still review commissions, exclusivity, expenses, confidentiality, conflicts, and track record.

Patent valuation is another major issue. Buyers may consider market demand, claim scope, remaining patent life, competing technologies, licensing opportunities, enforceability, existing revenue, and strategic importance. The amount spent developing the invention does not automatically determine market value. Unfortunately, the market does not reimburse emotional trauma by the hour.

Ownership due diligence matters too. Employment, contractor, university, company, and prior assignment agreements can affect who actually owns the patent. Buyers want confidence that the seller holds the rights being offered.

Finally, we look at deal structure. Inventors should think beyond the headline purchase price. Retained licenses, future royalties, milestone payments, earnouts, rights to improvements, warranties, indemnification, and other terms can significantly change the value of a transaction.

The core lesson: do not decide whether to sell a patent only because someone is willing to buy it. Decide based on your financial goals, risk tolerance, commercialization capabilities, market timing, and expectations for the invention’s future.

Sometimes selling is the smartest move. Sometimes licensing creates better long-term economics. Sometimes holding the patent makes the most sense.

The important part is making the decision strategically instead of accidentally.

To chat about this one-on-one, grab a free consult at strategymeeting.com