Tag: protect your business

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Vaccinate Your Business Against Your Competition with a Patent 🦠

Moderna polynucleotide primary mRNA construct

I got my second vaccine dose this week and ended up getting pretty sick for a day or so. As I was laying in bed recovering (wondering how I would get around to writing my weekly patent post), it crossed my mind that the vaccine is actually a great analogy for patent protection.

It takes time to book an appointment, go to the pharmacy, and get your shot. And there is the cost associated with the fact that you may react with various symptoms that could last a day or two.

It also takes time and effort to prepare for a good patent application, and it is going to cost a fair bit initially to complete the preparation, draft, and file the application.

The vaccine protects you against COVID-19 and the patent protects you against your competition!

On the other hand, if you don’t get the vaccine, you could be facing a far more serious situation. There is a significant risk of getting COVID-19, and potentially even dying from it.

Similarly for innovative businesses that depend on their technology for their competitive advantage, if you don’t get a patent application it could cause serious issues. Your competition may create a similar product and run you out of the market, or even put you out of business.

If your business is innovative, get your vaccine against your competition by pursuing a patent!

PS: If you’re wondering about the image, it’s a polynucleotide primary mRNA construct from one of Moderna’s patents related to the COVID-19 vaccine.

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Protect Your Business Against the Large Players in Your Industry 😨

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