The past few years have seen an increase in the amount of attention focused on invention and design education at the college and K-12 levels. Given these efforts the dearth of research on students preexisting conceptions of invention is surprising. Knowledge of invention beliefs and attitudes will inform educational efforts by allowing educators to target the curriculum and accompanying activities more effectively than is possible without this knowledge. In this study 55 sixth-grade students completed open-ended survey questions related to their conceptions of ldquo invention. rdquo Results suggest that students have few or simplistic conceptions of the invention and patent processes.