Author: Trevor

Posted on

How will you use your patent?

Let’s say you decide to file a patent for $8,000 – $12,000, then within the subsequent year, you pay another $10,000 to maintain it.

What will you do with your patent application? How will it benefit your business? Will it bring more value than you paid?

As business strategy questions, not legal questions, these are not questions your patent lawyer will likely help you with.

You need to be the expert.

You need a deep enough understanding of the patent process to be able to determine how you will use your patent after your lawyer submits your application for you.

If you plan for this BEFORE drafting and filing your application, it will greatly improve your ability to use your patent effectively. Also, the prep work will help you work with your lawyer more efficiently, may bring the legal fees down, and will result in a far better patent application.

If you’re considering filing a patent application within the next few months, make sure to become an expert on how your patent will impact your business and do the right kind of preparation well in advance by joining The IP Link’s new Product Protection Playbook™️ program.

Also, let me know in the comments below if you have filed a patent in the past, what benefit did it bring to your business? If you haven’t yet, do you have a plan for your patent once it’s filed?

#intellectualproperty #preparation #help #strategy #business #patent #patents

Posted on

Focus on the near-term benefits of patents, not enforcement

Enforcement is the process where you start sending cease-and-desist letters and even suing infringers for manufacturing or selling products that overlap with your patent.  

Worried about having to enforce your patent once you file?

You might be worrying about problems you won’t have for many years, if ever. Instead, focus on the near-term benefits of filing a patent application! Watch the video below and let me know your thoughts by commenting on this post!

Posted on

Is Your Product Patentable?

Many people ask me to help determine whether or not their product or technology might be patentable. You might be asking yourself that question right now. The answer to this question is tied closely in with the criteria for patentability. What you may not realize is that there is an even better, deeper way of asking whether or not your technology is patentable.

Your product almost certainly has more than one aspect or element, each of which could have the potential to be patentable. To make matters even more complex, each aspect of your product can be described with varying degrees of specificity.

How broadly or narrowly you describe your product will greatly impact the likelihood that your eventual patent application will be accepted or rejected.

So rather than asking, “is my product patentable?” it is far more insightful to ask “which aspect(s) of my product are most likely to be patentable and at what level of specificity?”

The first phase of The IP Link’s Product Protection Playbook will help you clearly brainstorm and articulate all the aspects of your product at multiple levels of specificity and ultimately become clear on which aspects of your product have the most potential to move forward with patent protection. Through our Playbook, you will gain the confidence you need to justify the initial effort and costs associated with filing a patent application.

Check out this video to learn more about this and the other phases of our Product Protection Playbook: https://theiplink.com/playbook/

Posted on

Engaging With a Patent Lawyer

When filing a patent application, it’s important to have a high-quality legal professional working with you when the time comes. Potentially even more important than this, you need to be well prepared FIRST.

Through The IP Link’s new program we help founders, entrepreneurs, and innovators who may be intimidated by the prospect of paying for and working with a patent lawyer find and engage with the right person.

We give clients access to our email templates and lists of recommendations, ensure they know what questions to ask and what instructions to give (and how to articulate them), and let them know in advance what information the lawyers will need so that it is ready to go. This saves time, results in a better patent, and in many cases keeps costs more manageable.

Preparing in this way and taking this approach ultimately enables our clients to stay in charge of the process and costs, directing their lawyer to work for them on their timeline.  

Just last week I was helping a client through this process with a new lawyer (that I hadn’t worked with before) and the lawyers were pleasantly surprised at how well prepared my client was to move forward with the patent application. So much so that they agreed the introductory call was not needed, and they were able to provide a far lower quote for drafting and filing the patent!

If this sounds like a better way to work with a lawyer to you, I would love to discuss it in more depth! Book a call here: https://theiplink.com/book/

For more info on how we help, watch this video:

PS To my lawyer friends: if you wish your clients came to you a bit more prepared, we should also talk!

#patent #patents #attorney #lawyer #founder #startups #entrepreneurs #innovation #intellectualproperty #legal #help #lawyers #attorneys #law

Posted on

Avoid this mistake!

There’s a common patent filing mistake that many people make that I would love to help you avoid!

One business owner (whose name I won’t mention) got in touch with me three years after their initial patent filing with a notice from the patent office saying that their application had been rejected 😞.

I helped review the notice and provided suggestions for how to move forward from a business perspective. In some cases these rejection notices can be argued, but unfortunately in this case it would have been pretty difficult because the patent office found a previously filed patent that was very similar to that business owner’s product. The best option was to start all over again with a new patent focussing on the improvements this company made since filing their initial patent application.

Unfortunately, this late in the game, there wasn’t much I could do to help bring that patent application back to life. However, if they had completed a bit more prep work prior to their initial filing, such as the assessment and strategy work we complete in the Product Protection Playbook, one of a couple things might have happened differently.

In one case our Product Protection Playbook would have enabled them to better understand how they should focus their application so that the rejection notice could have been far less severe and easily dealt with. Alternatively what they learned through the Product Protection Playbook would have led them to avoid filing a patent on that product or aspect, saving them tens of thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands 💰💰💰, and potentially even enabling them to improve their product based on what they learned.

I wish this business owner, and others like him, who face these rejection notices would have had the opportunity to work through The IP Link’s Product Protection Playbook before their initial application!!

In particular, the first three modules of the program help our clients go from being not sure if they have anything patentable to being clear on which aspects of their product have the most potential, greatly reducing the likelihood of costly mistakes like this being made!

If you’re getting into the patent game, let’s have a chat! Book a call here: http://theiplink.com/book

Posted on

Client Feature: IGGI Bowl

IGGI Bowl

I’ve been helping a client (IGGI) better understand the patent process and improve their patent application over the past year and a half (on and off) and today they’re launching their product on Indiegogo!!

This is a really cool product with A LOT of science behind how it works that is mostly hidden behind an awesome design. Go buy one now!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/iggi-bowl-the-easiest-way-to-eat-balanced-meals

It was fun digging into all the different aspects of his product from a technical perspective and making sure they were included in the patent. There’s a lot going on there to trick your subconscious into eating healthier!

#design #science #innovation #productdesign #kickstarter #crowdfundingcampaign #intellectualproperty #patent #designthinking

Posted on

Client-Facing Process

I’m just finishing creating a video walkthrough of the blueprint of my step-by-step process that I use with clients to drastically improve their patent applications so that they go from being uncertain and vulnerable to strategically protected in as little as 60 days.

This is an in-house client-facing process but I figured some of you might benefit from seeing the blueprint and video:

Product Protection Playbook™️

Let me know your thoughts on this by commenting below!  If you have additional questions, feel free to book a call.

#video #innovation #patent #patents #intellectualproperty #entrepreneurship #startups #entreprenur #innovation #startup

Posted on

Pilot Program!

You may have seen me posting on social media over the last couple weeks about a new pilot program I’ve been working on. The pilot has just launched and this week I want to provide a bit more info about it!

At a high level, the pilot is a nine-step program that helps entrepreneurs, startup founders, and innovators go from being uncertain about how to approach the patent process and vulnerable to their competition to being strategically protected.

Make sure to sign up for our email list (if aren’t already) and keep an eye out for posts for more details on each of the modules later this week! If you would like more info right away, comment with the word “PILOT” below and I’ll send you a message. Thanks!

#founders #entrepreneurs #startup #innovation #howtopatent #entrepreneurship #startups

Posted on

Free Patent Training

Free Training

You may have seen me present on intellectual property for Startup Edmonton, ATB Entrepreneurship Centre, Business Link AB, Rainforest Alberta – yeg, or elsewhere, but if not, or if you are looking for a refresher I’ve got great news.

I recently recorded a webinar all about the #patent process, typical costs and risks, and the potential that patents have to bring value to your business.

Watch it now right here:

Free Training

#patentstrategy #patenttimeline #entrepreneurship #technology #innovation #startup #webinar #business #startups #intellectualproperty #entrepreneurs

Posted on

Why I Started The IP Link

Like many entrepreneurs, I started my business (The IP Link) because I saw a need. It looked like there was a huge gap between what entrepreneurs and innovators needed and the services that the patent lawyers were providing.

After working with many clients over the past 1.7 years I’ve confirmed this to be true.

Patent lawyers provide an excellent service but are typically very focussed on the LEGAL side of intellectual property (as they should be). Entrepreneurs are often left to determine for themselves whether a patent could bring value to their business.

Let me say, after 9.5 years working with patents this is not an easy question to answer!

That’s why I’ve built The IP Link: to fill this gap, help entrepreneurs evaluate their product(s) from a business perspective, and prepare them for working with a patent lawyer.

#mission #vision #motivation #help #entrepreneurship #patents