Success is in the Details. About a year ago I was working with my patent attorney on a new product I'd designed and wanted protection on.  I had spent a bit of money designing and building a prototype and a significant amount on the patent process also.   Unfortunately, it became quite clear early on that there were a number of patents similar to mine that I hadn't found during my patent search because I used google's patent search and they were typed in as WBENCH rather than WRENCH.  This seemingly harmless typo almost cost me well over $12,000! After some deliberation and questioning I decided it best to proceed with the process and we began searching for distinguishing differences between my application and the issued patents.    As I poured through these patents and discussed it with my attorney I realized that just one word could change the entire scope of a patent's coverage.  In fact, after my application was initially rejected I was able to find one sentence in each of the two most similar patents distinguishing a significant difference.  By identifying these differences and making only minor changes in the application we were able to get the patent issued and obtain protection of my intellectual property!

Disclaimer: The above is a picture of the first patent granted, not mine!

These are only a few of the examples that have convinced me to spend a little more time on the details, if you'd like more leave me a note in the comments! Remember, sometimes it's important to 'sweat the small stuff' because Success is in the Details.