A SCOTTISH inventor worked painstakingly to produce a tool

specifically for working on car engines -- only to be told that he could

already buy it for half the price in Halfords.

It is, said Mr Ian McMurdo, design adviser with the Design Council

Scotland, all too common a problem.

Innovators fail to check if their own creation has already been

invented, patented, and licensed -- like the man who thought he had a

brilliant new idea and discovered someone else had patented it in 1927.

It was to try to highlight problems such as this that the council took

its free Innovation NoticeBoard roadshow to Glasgow yesterday. The

council acts as a dating agency between innovators and companies

interested in developing new products, said Mr McMurdo.

He warned that some inventors became zealots, obsessed with the belief

that the world needed their products.

Ideally, the inventor should do his inventing as a side-line and have

a full-time job to support him financially.

''We cannot help with money or cash but what we are trying to do is to

help structure the innovator's idea into a business plan, looking at the

market and production,'' he said.

The Japanese were the world leaders in innovation, said Mr McMurdo.

Miss Sue Cottam, manager of the Innovation NoticeBoard, said that, in

the last two years, six licences had been signed through the council's

scheme and the projected retail sales value for these products over the

next five years was between #26m and #30m.

Three Scottish products now on the NoticeBoard waiting to be picked up

by an interested company include an easylift shovel for carrying heavy

loads with one arm, a tool for laying slabs, and a vehicle leveller for

parking vehicles such as caravans.