Bermuda’s “visionary innovators” — from web designers to the inventor of a shark suit — will be celebrated as part of World Intellectual Property Day.The Intellectual Property Office has teemed up with the Ministry of Business Development for Thursday’s event.Inventor Robert Smith likened inspiration to a form of possession, telling The Royal Gazette: “When ordinary people invent something, it hits their mind and they can’t give up. It comes from the universe, or God. I believe people are chosen to do it.”For Mr Smith, painting and maintaining roofs sparked the idea for a rainwater filter.“I was fixing a roof, and when it started raining I saw trash on the roof going down to the tank,” Mr Smith said. “I thought there should be some way of stopping that.”The key would be filtering out the dirt without impeding the flow down the three-inch pipe to the tank.“The thought hit my mind, but I didn’t know what to do,” he recalled. “I tried, tried and tried with this idea, just trial and errors, until I was ready to give up. The real inspiration came in a dream.”The Honae 3-Way Rain Water Filter was patented in 2001.Calling himself “a field person, not an office person”, Mr Smith said the difficulty was knowing what to do next.“You don’t know who to deal with. The average person doesn’t know their rights and such, and you have to depend on someone else.”Mr Smith tried to bring the filter to market with the late Health Minister Nelson Bascome.Their business partnership ended in court, where Mr Bascome was tried and cleared of a charge of theft.“I did not have a good business partner,” Mr Smith said of the arrangement. However, he added: “Things are working out now.”With 14,000 filters in storage, he said he plans to have the devices out on the market again “before the year is out”.For the creators of vaonline.tv, Qian Dickinson and Phil Davis, the idea came not as a flash but a slow burn.“It was pretty organic,” Mr Dickinson said. “I’ve been a DJ since 2000. It evolved into the first website in Bermuda to allow people to sign on and contribute media.”Likening the site to a cross between CNN iReport and MySpace, Mr Dickinson said the site now boasts about 5,000 members.“I had good connections to DJs, artists and event promoters, and that’s the spectrum of people who contribute,” he said. “It opened into something where everybody could post. It’s not something we advertised to start with. We’ve kept it under our domain and focused on what we do.”His advice to others: “Technology is constantly evolving year to year. Look for the tools that are out there, and apply them to whatever you might be passionate about. It’s the passion that makes the difference.“We love this site and networking different people, and the product reflects that.”Other innovators highlighted for World Intellectual Property day are Rachel Sawden, who launched the “social purchasing” site BermyDeals; archaeologist Edward Harris, whose Harris Matrix technique is now in use worldwide; Leslie Center, who in 1994 patented an ultrasonic toothbrush, and shark suit designer Nelson Fox of St George’s.