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Diesel misfuelling prevention device earns £250,000 investment from TV’s Dragons’ Den and brings man
Added: (Thu Oct 02 2008)
When Mike Cotton, one of DDN’s directors, appeared on TV programme Dragons’ Den, he convinced the hard-nosed investors that there was a big market for his company’s misfuelling prevention device. With around 150,000 diesel cars being mistakenly filled with petrol each year, the cost of repairing the damage runs into millions.
Asked by the TV dragons what was to stop other companies simply copying his company’s invention, Mike Cotton’s answer was short and simple: “Our international patent protection.”
That was good enough for TV Dragons Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden, who jointly agreed to invest £250,000 (a record for the programme) in return for 25 per cent of the business.
As DDN’s sales director, Mike Cotton was nominated by his colleagues to go on the TV programme because of his powers of persuasion. The original idea for the misfuelling device had come from two of his fellow directors, Mark Wells and Tony Joy. Tony had worked at an automotive components company and knew how to get a prototype made and – crucially – how to go about searching patent databases to make sure that their idea was truly original. The patent search showed that while there were devices that could be incorporated into a new vehicle at the manufacturing stage, nobody had patented a workable solution for a retrofittable device for existing vehicles.
With some 78 million diesel cars and vans in Europe, most without any form of misfuelling prevention device, DDN’s directors were confident that the market potential was huge.
Mark Wells and Tony Joy lost no time in appointing a firm of patent attorneys, filing their first patent application and building a working prototype. Although the device looks (and is) quite simple, there is more to it than meets the eye. The zinc-plated steel ‘funnel’ has to be able to channel fluid, without splashing or spilling, at a rate of 60 litres per minute (which roughly equates to trying to swallow almost two pints of beer in one second). Making prototypes and applying for international patent protection can be costly. In spite of the arrival of a fourth director, in the person of Steve Sims, and his personal investment in the business, DDN was soon going to need more finance in order to tool up for volume manufacturing.
That was when DDN’s directors decided to pitch to the BBC TV programme’s Dragons. Their strategy of having sound intellectual property (IP) protection paid off, as did their decision to agree before the programme was recorded that Mike Cotton would not sell more than 25 per cent of the company’s shares, whatever happened. When Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden saw that he would not budge, they backed down from demanding 40 per cent and agreed to take just 12.5 per cent each, in return for their combined £250,000 investment.
West Midlands’ strength in automotive engineering
From his time working for an automotive components company, Tony Joy knew what a wealth of technical and sector knowledge there was in the West Midlands. He turned to Birmingham based Forresters for patenting and intellectual property expertise, His two main contacts there, Alison Lawson (partner) and Graham Dodd (senior associate) both have relevant scientific or engineering degrees, as well as legal qualifications and many years experience in IP. “At Forresters, DDN is supported by a team which has a lively interest in our product, its markets and our commercial success,” he says.
Stirchley-based Cameron Price are experts in plastic injection moulding technology for the automotive industry and were Tony Joy’s first choice both to produce the tooling for DDN’s misfuelling prevention product and to manufacture it. “DDN is still a small company,” he says. “As the director with overall responsibility for R&D, product design, IPR and manufacturing, I haven’t got time to fly off to China every other week. By using local suppliers I’ve dealt with before, I know we’re going to get the quality and support we need – and at a favourable rate.”
Wrong fuel: an expensive mistake
If you put petrol in your diesel-engined car by mistake, at the very least you face the cost and time it will take to drain the tank and refill it with the correct fuel. You may not see signs of damage to the fuel pump and engine for weeks or even months, but there will inevitably be some and it could eventually prove to be extremely costly.
The extent of the damage caused can vary depending on how much petrol enters the system. To minimise damage, the engine should not be started; draining the fuel tank (which costs anything between £150 to £300) will then help to restore the vehicle.
But if you don't realise the wrong fuel is in the tank and drive off, the car could malfunction and will inevitably break down. Depending on how much fuel has been drawn into the engine, you could end up with a £5,000 repair bill, which may well come out of your own pocket if your insurer refuses to accept your claim.
The DDN misfuelling prevention device can be installed at any stage, whatever the age of the vehicle, on most makes and model of cars or delivery vans. The cost – roughly equivalent to a tankful of diesel – is a tiny fraction of what it would cost to repair the damage caused by driving diesel vehicle that has accidentally been filled with petrol.
-ends-
Issued by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys
www.cipa.org.uk
95 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1DT
Institute manager: Nicholas Pope, tel: 020 7405 9450
For further information, see:
the DDN website www.misfuellingprevention.co.uk
or contact:
Peter Prowse, CIPA Tel: 01372 271234, mobile: 07973 213039
Email: peter.prowse@waylines.co.uk, or
Mike Cotton, DDN Mob: 07717 434004, email michael@macotton.com
Tony Joy, DDN Mob: 07876 592900, email: tony.joy@didoni.eu
Graham Dodd, Forresters Tel: 0121 236 0484, email: gdodd@forresters.co.uk
PHOTOS
For high-resolution JPEGs, contact Peter Prowse:
Email: peter.prowse@waylines.co.uk
Tel: 01372 271234
DDN 1 DDN 2
Tony Joy (right), DDN director and co-inventor of the misfuelling device, discusses with Birmingham based patent attorney Graham Dodd, a senior associate at Forresters, the best way to protect the invention from copycats around the world.
DDN 3 DDN 4
DDN’s misfuelling prevention device takes about a minute to fit to a car or van. Once installed, it looks like a normal filler cap – apart from the bright orange colour which acts as a visual reminder to use diesel, not unleaded petrol.
DDN 5 DDN 6
Inventor Tony Joy demonstrates what happens if you try to put unleaded petrol into a car fitted with his device: the unleaded nozzle simply won’t go in.
DDN 7 DDN 8
Try again with the correct fuel (diesel) and there’s no problem. It works just like the car’s original filler cap.
Issued by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys
www.cipa.org.uk
95 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1DT
Institute manager: Nicholas Pope, tel: 020 7405 9450
For further information, see:
the DDN website www.misfuellingprevention.co.uk
or contact:
Peter Prowse, CIPA Tel: 01372 271234, mobile: 07973 213039, or
Mike Cotton, DDN Mob: 07717 434004, email michael@macotton.com
Tony Joy, DDN Mob: 07876 592900, email: tony.joy@didoni.eu
Graham Dodd, Forresters Tel: 0121 236 0484, gdodd@forresters.co.uk