Imagine this scenario- you’ve been working on an invention for a while. It’s taken you a lot of effort, and the results are promising. Your efforts have resulted in something that makes life easier for people, that makes things run better and faster.
Then you come across a stumbling block- despite all the effort you’ve put in, and despite all the usefulness of the invention, you’re unable to get a patent on it.
What Went Wrong?
This happens more than you’d think. Innovation is the watchword of today, and plenty of people are making new and improved technology all the time. But relatively little of that technology actually makes it to the commercialization stage. Sometimes, even when the technology can be marketed, lack of adequate protection can prevent you from getting tangible monetary benefits out of your work.
Why does this happen? How can you prevent yourself from getting into such a situation?
After working with more than 800 innovators, business strategists, and entrepreneurs, I’ve come across three common mistakes that can cost you your patent rights.
Mistake #1: Premature Publication
Technology is usually protected with patents, and the key aspect of any patent is in its novelty. Unfortunately, a lot of innovators and inventors do not quite understand how stringent the novelty requirements for a patent are.
I have come across several instances of an excited academic or researcher publishing the key ideas involved in their eventual patent application, only to have it come back and work against them during the patent prosecution stage.
The lack of novelty in an application is hard to counter, even when the inventor themselves is the person publishing the information. Many patent applications have failed on that point alone.
If you are working on a technology with the ultimate aim of patenting, commercializing and marketing it, you need to remember that secrecy is the name of the game.
Make sure that the only people who know what’s happening with your research are your fellow inventors and other people indispensable to your process, funding, or business strategy. Even within these exclusive circles, using non-disclosure agreements to add a further layer of protection is probably wise.
At the end of the day, your aim should be to make sure that the first time the world hears about your invention, it’s through your patent application.
Mistake #2: Not Doing A Patentability Search
If you are an inventor who has spent all that time, money, and effort into making your invention, chances are you want to get yourself a patent as fast as you can. This makes sense, especially since you need to make sure that nobody else patents something similar before you do it. Speed matters in the patent process.
For a lot of people, this means filing your application as soon as it’s in any kind of coherent shape. However, this means that people sometimes skip a very crucial pre-patenting process: the patentability search.
A patentability search looks into all available literature surrounding a particular technology, and lets you know if your invention is likely to be granted a patent or not. As an added bonus, if your invention has multiple points of innovation, the patentability search can reveal which aspect to focus on so that you have a higher chance of getting a patent.
The patent process can be long, complicated, exhausting, and expensive. If you get your twenty years of exclusive rights over technology, all that effort is worth it. If you don’t, you’ve spent a lot of resources on something that is of no practical use to you.
The patentability search is a crucial tool that helps you avoid such a scenario, and skipping it can be very costly.
Mistake #3: Not Having A Clear Business Strategy
In the case of any new technology, your ultimate aim is going to be commercialization. Your patent is going to be of no use to you if you cannot monetize it.
This monetization can take many forms. The most obvious, of course, is manufacturing a product using the technology you’ve just patented. Other forms of monetization include patent licensing or patent assignments, or building up your patent portfolio so as to increase the viability and value of your enterprise.
While the exact way of monetizing your patent is up to you, a clear business strategy for your IP is essential. As I’ve emphasized before, getting a patent is usually a lot of work. Doing that much work on something that is ultimately of no use to you is simply not practical.
In fact, in some cases, it might actually be more beneficial to a business to never file for the patent and keep the technology a trade secret for as long as possible. Whichever way you choose, knowing exactly how your IP strategy will affect your business and marketing plans is essential.
Takeaways
I don’t need to tell you that the technology and innovation arena is highly competitive and very fast paced. If you’re an innovator, you already know this is the case. Patents are a valuable tool you can use to protect your efforts in this field.
However, innovators often have an improper understanding of how patents and other IPs work. Sometimes, innovators may also fail to consider how their IP protection affects their individual business needs. All of this drastically affects your chances of properly protecting your innovations.
The three common mistakes I spoke of are only one aspect of protecting your technology, but it’s an important one.
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