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The Schoofs Prize for Creativity

Your invention can lead to a chance to earn $1,000, $4,000, $7,000 or even $10,000.

Find out how to develop your devices or processes and create a prototype. Learn about intellectual property rights to protect your ideas.

Contest Rules

1. Eligibility

The contest is open to all UW-Madison undergraduates who will be enrolled full-time during the fall semester 2012. Contestants must be present for judging and the awards ceremony to collect their prizes. Students may form teams with full-time undergraduates from any UW-Madison schools and colleges; however, ALL teammates must register to compete. There is no limit on the number of team members; small interdisciplinary teams are encouraged. Each team member must provide documentation of participation.

Students who have interrupted full-time study with co-op experience during either fall or spring semesters 2012-2013 are eligible, but they must attend the contest judging in February. (Students out on co-op employment in February 2013 must obtain advance permission of the contest administrator if they are unable to leave their jobs to attend the competition.)

2. Qualifying Ideas

Each contestant or team will develop an original idea into a process or object. Teams or individuals may submit more than one entry. Separate documentation must be submitted for each entry. The idea can be a composition-of-matter, device, design, process, etc. — anything that is generally acceptable by the U.S. Patent Office. The entry need not be highly technical. It can be anything unique, including the proverbial “better mousetrap.” Contestants may use any reference materials or consult with any other persons. Class projects are not allowed in the competition unless the individual can prove (with witnessed documentation) that the idea was formed at least six (6) months prior to the start of the course. Teams of students from the same course or class project cannot enter the competition. If forming a team based on a class project, a student who can prove that his or her idea was formed at least six (6) months prior to the start of the course must choose team members from outside of the class. The team or contestant must also enter a prototype in the Tong Prototype Prize competition.

Innovation Day: The competition and judging for both the Schoofs Prize for Creativity and Tong Prototype Prize will be held Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013 (and Friday, Feb. 8, 2013, if necessary) on the engineering campus.

3. Requirements

  1. Registration: Contestants must register by completing the on-line application form by 11:59 p.m., Monday, October 15, 2012. No late applications will be accepted — no exceptions.

  2. Seminars: All single contestants and team members are encouraged to enroll in InterEngineering 601: (Topics in Interdisciplinary Engineering) Process Innovation: Conception, Selection and Commercialization of Ideas. This one-credit course was designed with Innovation Days in mind, to provide students competing with information about where new ideas come from, how to assess ideas for feasibility, the product development process and the entrepreneurial steps used to commercialize concepts into successful new ventures. Students registered to compete in Innovation Days will be required to attend up to three specific sessions of this course whether or not they are enrolled in the course for credit. A schedule of required seminars will be emailed to all registered students after the registration deadline has passed.

    Past seminars are available at the Innovation Days video library

  3. Turning in Your Project: All final projects are due in M1002 Engineering Centers Building, by 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 23, 2013. Each team or individual contestant must prepare a written disclosure in the following patent-like format (4-5 typewritten pages plus drawings, photos or videotape).

  4. Ideas Notebooks: Each participant must keep an "ideas notebook" detailing their involvement in the progress of the invention. This notebook must be bound and prenumbered so that it’s easy to show that pages haven’t been added, subtracted or substituted. Each Innovation Days registrant is invited to pick up a free “ideas notebook” from the Engineering Student Development, located in suite M1002 ECB). Ideas notebooks from ALL individuals competing in the 2013 competition are due with the written entries on Wednesday, January 23, 2013.

    The written entries will include the following information:

    • Original ideas notebook(s).

    • Written disclosure of the idea, including the following:

      • Abstract — One paragraph describing the invention.

      • Field of invention — Description of the general field of use of the invention (also give examples of the invention’s application).

      • Background — Describe the state of the art. (Describe what is currently being done and what is not.)

      • Summary/specification of the invention with drawings — Must be easily understood by judges.

      • Claims — A list of novel features that the inventor believes to be original.

      • Marketing information — What is the potential market for your invention? How have you determined that? Why will these people want to buy your product and not something else on the market?

The team leader should complete and attach the Competition Cover Sheet to the front of each entry.

Six stapled copies of the written entry with the Competition Cover Sheet are required. You must also submit all original Ideas Notebooks connected with the project. (Note: Only submission of the original Ideas Notebooks is required. To the extent the students feel their notebooks can substantially add to the quality of their entries, they are free to submit copies. Additionally, they may choose to only copy selected portions of their notebooks — the highlights — to submit to the judges. In no case will any entry be penalized for not including copies of part/all of an Ideas Notebook.)

If team members have applied for a patent on the invention, this must be disclosed in the entry. A copy of the patent application must be included with the entry.

ALL TEAM MEMBERS must certify that the IDEA IS original AND is equally shared by the team. (See the Competition Cover Sheet.)

NOTE: Your prototype is NOT due with your written entry on January 23, 2013. Prototypes are due on the day of the competition.

4. Contest Prizes

All awards are given at the discretion of the judges. All decisions of the judges are final.

Schoofs Prize for Creativity
First Prize $10,000
Second Prize $7,000
Third Prize $4,000
Fourth Prize $1,000

Tong Prototype Prize
First Prize $2,500
Second Prize $1,250
Third Prize $700

Younkle Best Presentation Award: $1,000
Sorenson Design Notebook Award: $1,000

5. Judging/Presentation

Judging will take place on the engineering campus Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012 (and Friday, Feb. 10, 2012, if necessary). Each contestant or team will display a poster explaining the idea. Prototypes are strongly encouraged but not required, except as noted above. Contestants must also be prepared to give a 10-minute oral presentation to the judges. A timed question and answer session with the judges will follow.

6. Criteria

Decisions of the judges are final.

Judging will be based on the following scale:

40% Originality, novelty, creativity, technical innovation and patentability.
30% Usefulness, value and probability of commercial market success.
10% Completeness, quality and organization of the application materials.
10% Quality of oral presentation and poster display.
10% Quality of written disclosure.

7. Ownership/Disclosure

All owners of the idea must be represented on the team or the entry will be declared ineligible. After entry materials have been submitted, the college reserves the right to publish information about the contestants’ work in university publications and to release information to the media. (This will be considered a public disclosure of your idea.)

8. Patenting

If team members have applied for a patent on the invention, this must be disclosed in the entry. A copy of the patent application must be included with the entry.

Contestants may choose to file patent applications on their own or to disclose their inventions to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (610 Walnut Street, Madison, WI 53726-2336) before or after the competition.

PLEASE NOTE: On September 16, 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the America Invents Act, which makes extensive changes to U.S. patent law. Some of these changes may directly impact Schoofs Creativity Prize competitors. Most significantly, the new law establishes that the party with the earliest filing date (“first to file”) shall prevail. This shift in U.S. patent law from “first to invent” to “first to file” is a dramatic change and becomes effective on March 16, 2013. (It is noteworthy that existing patent law in many foreign countries is based upon “first to file”, and in many countries applications must be filed prior to public disclosure.) So long as the “first to invent” law remains in effect, inventors retain a one-year grace period to file for a U.S. Patent after their own public disclosure of their invention, and the law is still clear that others cannot patent an idea that is derived (that is, stolen) from someone else. Nonetheless, there are many good reasons why an inventor might want to file his or her patent application before public disclosure.

To understand more about the new law, please visit:

The contest administrator cannot provide consulting on patent questions/issues. For information on patents and patenting, consult:

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