If you’re investing your time, energy, and money into building a new physical or software product, what steps are you taking now to prevent the big players like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple from creating their own versions of your product once you put in all the hard work to prove the market?
If there’s no market for the product you’re developing, the big players will probably never notice your efforts, but my guess is that you’re hoping for and planning for the opposite. You likely have good reason to believe there is a need for your product and that customers will pay for it. Once you prove this (with hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of paying customers), why wouldn’t the industry leader build their own version of your product? You’ve probably seen Amazon Basics products popping up, or Apple integrating the latest, greatest app into their core OS. Would they, or the big player in your industry, do the same?
This a problem for you NOW, even if you’re still in the early stages of development. The problem is, you need to file a patent BEFORE you first sell or publicly release your product. So if you wait until your bigger competitors start noticing you, it will be far too late to consider patent protection.
I would love to help you develop a patent strategy and sort through whether a patent would help or hinder your business. This is exactly what our core programs are designed to do, so that your business has a far better hope of holding your own against your bigger competitors when the time comes. Let’s chat! https://theiplink.com/book
“When somebody comes to me and says I want to invest in your company, the two questions that always come up are, ‘let’s see your financials’, and ‘what kind of patent do you have.‘ It comes up every time.”
A client, who is currently looking for investment, said this to me in a recent call.
Investors want to know how you will prevent competitors from taking over your industry once you prove the market. Having a strategic patent application will help you answer that question and will show investors that you are a running credible business and that you are committed to investing the time and money necessary to achieve success. This will certainly increase your chances of getting investment.
In certain cases, this increased chance of getting investment may be reason enough to pursue the illustrious patent-pending status.
Take the next step towards securing an investment by moving forward with patent protection. Book a call now to ask all your patent questions: https://theiplink.com/book/
Also, let me know in the comments if you’ve had “the patent question” from an investor or, if you are an investor, is this one of your standard questions?
It does not make sense for all businesses to file a patent application.
This decision depends on your industry, investment, revenue, aspirations, business model, product, price point, and many other factors.
For many businesses, it’s relatively easy to determine that they don’t need to spend time or money filing a patent. For others, it’s clear that they do need a patent. The vast majority of businesses, however, are in the middle. For these businesses, determining whether or not they need a patent requires a concerted effort to review the opportunity, risks, and costs and to develop an approach and strategy.
The IP Link’s Product Protection Playbook program helps business founders evaluate patents and gain clarity on where they fit in this spectrum. The results of this work may reveal that patents don’t make sense. On the other hand, it may show that they are a great opportunity!
If you think you might be missing out on an opportunity to level up your business, watch my patent training webinar which includes a discussion of potential risks, costs, and benefits of a patent (link in the comments).
If you’re still developing your business and product and are thinking about looking into patents once you’ve finished developing your product, now is the perfect time to jump into the first phase of The IP Link’s Product Protection Playbook program.
Learn more in the video below:
Find the Gaps in your Market
I’ve had a couple clients wait until their product was further along in its development only to find that they were “reinventing the wheel” so to say. Completing an in-depth competitive review will illuminate the gaps in the market and help you focus the development of your product. A careful review of related patents will greatly improve your chances of uncovering competitors and competitive technologies.
In one case, even though a company I worked with was aware of their competitors, they hadn’t carefully searched the patent literature early in the creation of their product so they missed an important patent in their space that was owned by a company that wasn’t on their radar prior to the search.
Product Development from the Shoulders of Giants
The added benefit of completing such a search early in the development of your product is that you may be able to use what you find in existing patent applications, expired patent documents, patents in countries that you don’t operate in, and scientific publications to improve your own product. You do have to be careful not to infringe on any active patents in your country, but the vast majority of published patents and other documents never issued or are no longer active, and therefore won’t impact your ability to operate.
Further, gaining an understanding of the prior art will enable you far more effectively improve on it. Without knowing what already exists, you may end up developing a product or solution that is already publicly known, even if it may be in an obscure corner of the patent literature. Why waste your time on that, when you could start from what’s known and improve on it!
When it comes time to file your own patent application, you’ll be far ahead of the pack and much more likely to have a patentable product on your hands. When it comes time to sell your product, your offering will be truly unique!
If this sounds like where you are currently in your business, let’s jump on a call and I’ll share all the info you need to join The Product Protection Playbook.
If you’re reading this, I would love to know: have you ever done a patent search or had one done?
What Is A Patent Search
A patent search is, as it sounds, performing a search to try to find patents or patent applications through one or more of the patent search engines or databases. You might need to do a patent search if you’re considering filing a patent application on your product and want to know if anyone has filed a patent on a similar product previously (more on why this is important below). You also might want to look for previously filed patents if you are worried that someone else already filed a patent on one of your products or processes and that you might be infringing (using their idea without the right to do so).
Why Is A Patent Search So Important
As I outline in the above video, if you’re considering filing a patent application then a patent search is one of the most important steps that you will want to complete before working with a lawyer.
Patents can be very expensive, especially over time, so you will really want to make sure that you have confidence that your application will be accepted by the patent office once they finally review it. Depending on your approach, it may be 3-4 years and $50,000 – $200,000 before you receive any official notice as to whether or not your product is patentable. At this point, the patent office will review your application to see if it meets the criteria for patentability.
A patent search, if done right, can give you a fair bit of confidence that the patent office will accept a large portion of your application before spending all the money necessary to get to the review stage.
A patent search will also provide significant insight into your competition and the competitive landscape of your industry. Often times you may even discover competitors that you didn’t previously realize were in your industry.
In our experience, we have found that the best approach to patent searching is if you, as the inventor or entrepreneur, do at least some searching yourself initially – with the right help and education. This can be augmented with a review and expansion from an unbiased patent search firm, such as The IP Link, but you will gain a far deeper understanding of the patent process and the patentability of your product if you also search yourself. This will also enable you to make better decisions about your patent strategy and how your patent should be written.
This is precisely why we built a course and coaching program called Search (part of the full Product Protection Playbook) to help teach entrepreneurs and founders how to patent search properly without getting too bogged down with all the legalistic aspects. In addition to teaching you how to search efficiently, thoroughly, and properly, we will coach you through the process and review your search strings, results, and other work throughout the program!
We get into all the details in the Search program, but at a high level, there are many patent search engines that can be used to get started with a patent search, the best one likely being Google Patents (patent search Google). The difficulty comes with determining what to search, what keywords to use, how to structure your search string, and sifting through results. It is possible to do a patent search by number or a patent search by company (patent search company) to dig into specific patents in more depth, but from a patentability perspective, you will likely want to start with a topic or classification search.
As a patent search firm, we also do patent searching for our clients, but typically recommend this as an add-on to the Search program. If it’s time for a patent search, let’s talk!
What To Search
If your product incorporates many features or aspects, which they almost always do, more than one of these aspects could be patentable, maybe even independently of the other aspects.
If you’ve done a search or paid a third party to complete a search, how did you or the searcher decide which aspect to focus the search on? Did this even come up in the discussion?
I have seen the results of patent searches that a few of my clients had done before they joined my program and they often miss important aspects of the product or are so broad they are completely uninformative. To make matters worse, trying to read through a bunch of patents without any interpretation or understanding of how they might impact your patent strategy going forward is just a recipe for disaster.
For example, one of our clients recently had the following experience. “[The IP Link’s Search program] gave me a better understanding of how to search when it comes to patents. We’ve all [our team] been doing searches, all plugging away at it, and we even had a patent lawyer looking at it and they didn’t even find that one particular patent that came way too close to make us feel comfortable. So to me, the plan [The IP Link’s Product Protection Playbook] works.” – Tony Woolf
The first module of The IP Link’s Product Protection Playbook revolves entirely around brainstorming and defining all the aspects of your product (or process) and deciding which aspect to review more closely through a patent search. Without this initial step, the search will be unfocussed, take far longer than it needs to, and will likely miss important elements of your product.
Where To Patent Search
Many people are initially focused on searching for patents only in the country where they want to file their patent. I hear people asking about patent search USA or patent search Canada, for example. Although it is possible to specifically do a US patent search by keyword, for example, it is typically too narrow to be useful from a patentability perspective.
Ideally, you will want to perform a search that covers many countries. Any patent or article that is published anywhere in the world can impact your ability to get a patent on your product. As such, it is important to use a patent search engine that can search many countries all at once, and not just focus on doing a patent search in the USA or doing a patent search in Canada exclusively.
Common Patent Search Questions
I recently had a discussion about this with an entrepreneur who is just launching a product and thought I would share it here as I’m sure he isn’t the only one with this question!
Entrepreneur: “Moving in a product-focused business, [patent searching] seems like the beginning of a steep investment. How do you know when to stop looking and if there isn’t a smaller part of your design that could be patented under a different category?”
Trevor: I typically suggest trying to gain confidence that at least one aspect of your product will have a good chance of being accepted by the patent office. Once you have enough confidence to justify the cost (assuming you also have a strategy for benefitting from the patent), then move on with drafting and filing the patent.
In the drafting phase, include all the aspects of your invention (not just the one you searched in more depth), even if they cover more than one classification. Worst case, the aspects you didn’t search may be rejected, but you will still hopefully get a patent on that core aspect that you had confidence in from your search.
Entrepreneur: “Makes sense. But what about infringement research? Seems like a never-ending loop.”
Trevor: The initial research can be streamlined with the objective of gaining just enough confidence to justify moving forward with the patent at hand.
If similar patents are found or if there is another reason to believe you might be infringing on a different patent, then a more in-depth review should be considered, but this could be said of any business regardless as to whether or not they’re planning on filing their own 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?
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!
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/
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!
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
