As a young boy growing up on the family farm, Bob Berndt got a bad case of poison ivy after walking through the brush.

His father, who was always chewing on one weed or another, handed him some leaves he picked from a particular plant and said, “Chew this.”

“It worked,” said Berndt, who with his family has been using that home remedy for the past 40 years. Now, after securing a patent on a botanical extract made from that plant, Berndt is working with two partners to market “Doc Bob Home Cure” as an effective remedy for poison ivy and other rashes. Obtaining the patent, which was approved in February, took about two years.

“It’s fun to see it go from a scrap of paper to a package that’s going out to families,” said Julie Weissinger, a partner with Berndt in the business with her husband, Dr. Robert Weissinger. Their company, Doc Bob LLC, has gotten the product placed at two pharmacies so far, Medicap Pharmacy in Madrid and Wright Pharmacy in Stuart, and is now targeting larger retailers such as Dahl’s Food Marts and Walgreens.

“There is no quick fix [to the patent process],” she said. “I think younger people who may have a product or invention want results today, but with something like this, you need the patience of your parents, or you’ll absolutely go crazy.”

On average, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issues about 700 patents each year to Iowa inventors or companies. However, patent applicants are facing higher fees and longer waiting times than ever, as the agency struggles to cope with an ever-increasing backlog of applications. Currently, the USPTO estimates that 600,000 patent applications have yet to be assigned to examiners, and that another 100,000 applications will be filed this year.

In response to the demand, the fees charged by the patent office “were almost doubled for the numbers of claims and number of pages,” said Heidi Nebel, managing partner of McKee, Voorhees & Sease, a Des Moines law firm that specializes in intellectual property law. “There’s also a search fee that’s been enacted. That used to be covered in the application fee; now there’s an extra fee.” With the increases, the filing fees for a small business can easily total $1,500 or more, Nebel said.

Then there’s the cost of a patent attorney. On average, the fee charged by an attorney to apply for a patent in the Midwest averages about $5,000 for a “minimally complex” case, to $8,250 for a complex filing such as a biotechnology patent, Nebel said. Given the increased fees being imposed by the patent office, it’s important for applicants to keep both the number of pages and claims, the legal discussion of what the intellectual property right would include, to a minimum, she said.

The higher volume has also about doubled the amount of time it takes for an invention to be reviewed. From her experience, Nebel said, applications that might have taken a year to get through the system five years ago are now taking two years, “which means that it’s that much longer that you have before you can enforce your protection.”

Additionally, the patent office is more closely scrutinizing applications and more broadly applying restriction requirements, Nebel said. For instance, “they may say there are actually three inventions involved in this case, so you have to file two other patents. So the amount [of information] the patent office will examine in one patent is going down.”

Another Iowa patent holder who is now building a small business around his inventions learned the hard way that obtaining a patent doesn’t automatically equate to success in selling the product.

“Before you drop thousands and thousands of dollars into something, make sure you’ve got an audience,” said Jeff Grote, an Ankeny machinist who describes himself as “a farm boy who likes to fix things.” After receiving a patent on a new type of boat trailer lock he designed, he found he wasn’t able to produce it at a cost that would make it competitive with products already on the market.

However, after researching the trucking industry, he found a big potential market for effective anti-theft systems in populous areas such as Florida, Texas and California. He expects sales of his two recently patented products, the Neffco Watchdawg Lock, a small device that locks the air brake systems of semi-trailers, and Lugdawg, a lug nut extension that prevent wheels from being stolen from semis, to reach $250,000 this year.

An employee of CHR Design Inc. in Ankeny, Grote worked with that company’s owner, Clarence Rail, to develop the Lugdawg product.

“It’s all a matter of getting to know people in the business, people who understand what your goals are and want to work with you,” Grote said. Contracting with his employer’s Ankeny machine shop and two others has enabled him to get his business, Neffco Technologies, off the ground without having to invest in the costly, high-tech lathes needed to produce the parts. He sells his product through established dealer representatives who work on a commission basis.

“I’m growing at a phenomenal rate,” Grote said. “I’d like to hit at least half a million dollars in sales in 2007, and from 2008 on, I wouldn’t be satisfied with less than $1 million in sales every year.”

Meanwhile, Doc Bob LLC is tweaking its packaging to meet retailers’ requirements, such as having the patent number and number of ounces printed on the bottle. The partners plan to wholesale the product, which comes in a small plastic spray bottle, for $10 to $12 per bottle. The company sells it on its Web site, www.docbobhomecure.com, for $19.99 a bottle.

Dr. Weissinger, who found more than 200 volunteers from his family practice who were willing to try the product to treat poison ivy, said that he had no cases of adverse reactions to the product, and that it cleared up the rashes within three days in most cases.

“Surprisingly, a lot of people want to try a natural product, especially when they can apply it at their own pace,” he said.

His wife has also used it the product to treat dry skin on their two Italian greyhounds, and the product has been selling well as an inexpensive alternative for pet owners who might otherwise face a $150 veterinarian bill, she said.

Once they obtained a patent, marketing companies began coming out of the woodwork, Dr. Weissinger said, and the partners have carefully avoided commitments that could jeopardize their rights to the product, he said.

Grote, who hopes to introduce two additional truck security products by the end of this year, said obtaining provisional patents has been a useful tool that gives him up to a year to refine the product based on customers’ suggestions.

The patent office charges a reduced filing fee for provisional patent applications — $75 for small businesses and $150 for larger companies – to allow inventors an inexpensive “placeholder” as they seek a patent. Grote said a small business owner should plan on spending an additional $1,500 in attorney fees to obtain the provisional status, but that obtaining that status is worthwhile.

“It gives you one year to go out and test-market the product and make changes,” he said. “So if a customer says, ‘Hey, this is good, but …’ he may just turn the lights on for you.”