Posts Tagged ‘Copyrights’

In my previous article I wrote that you need to actively manage your IP Strategy. This article is about how to build that practice.

OK, let’s say that you have created an IP Strategy document and you know what direction your company is going with the development of the company intellectual property. You have a clear concise roadmap that defines the directions and more importantly what areas you are going to stay away from.

Feels pretty good doesn’t it?

And then….the world changes.

Some markets become obsolete, a new product comes out that makes the original problem evaporate, a new service is available that prevents the cause for your product from existing, your market is gone. There is an old term for this: “Sitting On Your Laurels” and it doesn’t work anymore, there is ample evidence that it never worked. The world always changes, as small business owners we all know that and experience it every day. Our marketplace may be less conscious of the facticity of change (note to the unions, and people that want things to return to the same way they were).

How do you manage your IP in the light of these changes?

1. You must be paying attention to you market as if you were your own customer. What would make my need for this product go away? What would make this product better? What do I find annoying about this product or service? Is it hard to use? All of these are reason’s to abandon your product.

2. Are you in a market that is known for a lot of change? (Real Estate, Technology, Investments, etc.) If your business in in a volatile market with lots of change you have additional work to maintain your position in the market place, and even more work to get ahead in that market place. The good news? These markets have a great deal of energy and can support many new products, services and changes that other more established and stolid markets cannot.

3. Is your market saturated with competition? Additionally what is the complexion of that competition, are they bigger, smaller, better funded? Bigger doesn’t always mean better, large companies have more resources, but they are, in general, slower to recognize new opportunities and slower to exploit or even protect those opportunities. Smaller companies are, in general, much more nimble and innovative, however they can get starved for resources and need to scale back their innovation (remember protecting you IP is costly)

All of the above points need to be taken into account when working on your strategy. As a rule of thumb: when you first start working with your IP Strategy you need to take a look once a week, to make sure you are on course.

As you gain familiarity with your market, your customers, their customers and your products and services you will be able to stretch this time out. In the current climate of chaos and rapid change, you need to re-visit your strategy at least once a month. And remember: this is your document, you can change it at will. Indeed, if something is not working, rather than being constrained by it, use it as a tool to make purposeful changes to get back on track.

In my last article I said to create consequences and rewards for working on the IP Strategy. The consequences will manifest themselves for you if you don’t create them, so you must know what they are. The very survival of your company is in the balance.

The great benefit of creating your strategy is that you will have a clear path, that goes where YOU want it to go, and you can change it, powerfully, purposefully and with predictable results.

Get Started!!

Tagged as: Business Management, business planning, Business Strategy, Copyrights, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, technology

Intellectual Property Strategy

This article is a three part article on the need for a cohesive strategy for creating, developing, protecting and managing your companies intellectual property.

In previous articles I illustrated the ways to protect your intellectual property in the United States by availing yourself to the US Patent and Trademark Office. These articles were the beginning of the process. In this first part of a three part series I will cover the importance of creating a comprehensive Intellectual Property Strategy that will protect your market and your investment. As I have said many times before you need help to do this! And, you need the best help you can get! That said again, lets dive in!

Review of Concepts:

Let’s first review some basics:

1. What is a patent? A patent is a legal monopoly granted by the government to exploit your intellectual property for a specified time. A patent can cover a device, a process or any composition of matter created by a human being. It must
be novel and non-obvious and it cannot have already been rejected.

2. Types of patents: There are three types of patents in the US: Utility, Design and Plant. Utility patents cover most things that have function, design patents cover the outward appearance and plant patents cover asexually
reproduced plants. In the interest of full disclosure I have never worked on an Plant patent, nor do I know anyone that has, if that is your forte’ good luck and you are on your own.

3. What is a copyright?  A copyright is a law or laws that gives you ownership of the things your create. These are generally creative works including but not limited to: books, pictures, poetry, paintings, photographs and the like. The copyright gives you the right to reproduce the creation, distribute, create derivatives, perform or otherwise display publicly the work you have created.

4. What is a Trademark? A trademark is a type of intellectual property comprised of a distinctive symbol, sign or indicator used by an individual, business or other legal entity to help the consumers of the product or service
distinguish between themselves and others.

Need for a IP Strategy:

A cohesive IP strategy provides several things all are protective.

1. A strategy provides the direction for new development

2. A strategy provides the boundaries where your innovation can flourish without the intellectual and more importantly financial distractions can be reigned in.

3. A strategy defines where you specifically are going and also importantly where you are not going.

All these together save your business cash, time and effort while protecting your marketplace, your brand and your time.

Getting Started:

The get started developing any strategy you must first know your ultimate goal, until this is achieved you are working only with tactics, working without purpose; this is especially true when working with Intellectual Property, a mis-designed strategy will lead to wasted effort, resources and lost time.

Strategy must also be discerned from tactics, a distinction that many fail to understand. Strategy is the plan of actions, practices, roles and situations that must be produced to reach the ultimate goal. Tactics are the individual actions, practices, roles and situations that are performed in support of the Strategy to reach the ultimate goal, tactics may include interim goals along the way. That said the first step is to decide on your ultimate goal. Be specific; remember you are designing the future, so it’s big stuff you are doing here. With IP tactics include finding a good IP attorney, organizing your portfolio, determining your product roadmap, writing disclosures, working with developers, working with clerks and writing. All of the above items require you to get help.

Do It!

Step 1. Design your Ultimate Goal (i.e. Create A IP Portfolio for protecting and exploiting …..)

Step 2. List all the tactics needed to achieve that goal. (i.e. contact IP attorney, setup meetings, write disclosure, ….)

Spend quality time on Step 1, this is the most important step. The more clearly you define the strategy the more you will be able to see if your tactics are betraying your intention and you can correct to maintain alignment of your tactics to your ultimate goal.

Tagged as: Business Management, business planning, Copyrights, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Leadership, Patents, Strategy, technology

Documenting Inventions

In my last article is wrote that a laboratory notebook is an effective method for ensuring that you protect your intellectual property during development. This article comprises guidelines to help protect the integrity of the contents of your notebooks such that the contents are without reproach.

In patent law it is generally the first to conceive of an idea that is awarded the patent, a properly kept notebook is often the first documented evidence of a concept, development or process.

Generally speaking it is adequate to have a small drawing and some descriptive text to document a concept. The lab notebook aids with extending that concept in a protective manner.

Guidelines:

1. Take your notes contemporaneously with your development, as close to the time of your research or lab work as possible.

2. Remember that you are working to make sure that someone with your skill level can recreate what you’ve done, solely from the notes in the notebook.

3. Very few people organize their notebooks efficiently, with the possible legal outcome in mind. Remember: the lab notebook is your first line of defense.

4. If you need to have a blank page for some reason, draw a diagonal line and write “Void” on the line, initial and date the line. It is best however to avoid blank pages.

5. VERY IMPORTANT: IF you make a mistake, do not scribble over it, draw single line through the error and initial and date the line. you can do this for large areas by lining through at a diagonal and, again initialing and dating the line. At no time is it acceptable to remove any part of or all of a page. This will call into question the contents of the notebook as a whole.

6. When spanning multiple pages use “(Continued)” or “(Cont)” at the top of the page to denote a continuation from the previous page. If you are continuing something from an earlier page use “(Continued from page #)” or “(Cont from #)”.

7. Avoid fragmentary notes, make sure you use as complete a description as you can.

8. All entries are either in ink or printed and attached to the page with tape or glue. If attaching a page to the notebook, draw a line across the boundary of the attachment and the page and initial and date the line, this ensures that the date of the attachment is in congruence with the dates in the notebook.

9. Your writing must be legible. If someone else can’t read it, it must be redone. If it is illegible it might as well not exist. Remember you are writing to the future in your notebook, it must be clear.

What To Put In the Notebook:

1. Table of Contents. Leave room at the front of the notebook if there isn’t an explicit table of contents. Keep this up to date. This helps with finding information quickly in the event of a search through multiple notebooks (a very common occurrence).

2. Include a list of your assumptions as you begin.

3. Include any formulae or calculations that are important to your work.

4. Data, drawings, sketches, processes, procedures, notations, corrections, part numbers, assemblies, code snippets, tests, test results, etc. In General your thinking.

All of the above items are relatively easy to maintain once you get the mindset that you are writing to the future, in addition to the present.

Go get a notebook, set down and innovate, create and invent! It’s fun!

Image Courtesy: Paul Watson on Flickr

Tagged as: Copyrights, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Intellectual Property, possibilities, Return on Investment, Strategy, technology

A few weeks ago I wrote a series of articles on protecting your intellectual property. Today’s article is the beginning in a series that discusses how to protect your inventions before the patents are filed.
Long ago simply keeping the invention to yourself was adequate protection, this is no longer the case. If you can create an invention, some one else can create the same thing with the same amount of effort. In the end it all comes down to when you invented it and your ability to document when you created your invention.
The main method of protection to use when inventing is the laboratory notebook. There are many vendors for laboratory notebooks on the internet, prices range form a few dollars a piece to well over $100 (listing at the end of the article). This is not a place to save money, nor is it a place to break the bank.

Important Qualities in Lab Notebooks

• Hard bound – This is more for the protection of the contents of the notebook.
• Stitch Bound – It is important that the notebook show any evidence of tampering.
• Preprinted sequential pages numbers.
• Embossed book numbering.
• Preprinted grids or lines on each page
• Signature and confirmation block at the bottom of the page. It is important that each page has a signature block for counter signature.

Lab Notebook Rules

• Only one lab notebook open per person at a time.
• Lab note books are filled out contemporaneously, any gaps in time will cause questions t if a review is necessary.
• A list of notebooks and who they are issued to must be kept.
• Every pages must be signed and dated.
• If you need to attach a printout to any page, use tape to affix the attachment to the page, then draw a single line that traverses from the attached page to bound page. Signed and date on the line. Any signature without a date is invalid.
• No skipped pages. This is very important, any gaps, as in #2 above will create questions if a legal review is necessary.
• Lab notebooks must be stored securely, remember, this is the history of your invention.
• One final guideline – Start writing in your lab notebook early. In a legal conflict the earliest date wins.

What Goes in a Lab Notebook?
The simple answer to this question is “everything”. Everything that is that can be attributed to the invention you are working on. And several inventions can share a lab notebook.

What Does Not Go in a Lab Notebook?
Non-project related data – don’t write a grocery list in the book.

Partial List of Lab Notebook Suppliers:
http://www.bookfactory.com/
http://www.snco.com/lab.htm
http://www.eurekalabbook.com/Standard.html
http://www.laboratorynotebook.com/

Summary:
For documenting your inventions, grab a good notebook, get a good pen, and start writing. More next week on the maintenance and upkeep of your lab notebook.

Tagged as: Copyrights, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, www.activegarage.com

Many different areas of business have been covered in the past several weeks on Activegarage.com from the dance of entrepreneurship , creating and protecting your intellectual property, to protecting your company’s data .  Our goal is to help people transform their world by coming up with uncommon offers in the marketplace. 

So, now you’ve come up with the next breakthrough and are ready to take your first step as an entrepreneur.  You’ve come up with a name for your company and have set up a corporation.  You’re excited.  Financial freedom is just around the corner.  You go to register your company’s domain name and you come to find out…someone already owns it.  Don’t give up. 

Here are some simple steps to help you to continue moving forward.

1.     Change Your Domain Suffix

If .com is not available, look to see if any of the other domains are available (.net, .biz, etc…).  Be careful though as you might be in violation of a possible trademark infringement if the other domain in use is a legitimate business.

2.     Change The Name Slightly

Work on finding variations of the name you want until you find one that is available.  Again, be careful with this option as well as you could also be in violation of a possible trademark infringement. 

3.     Buy The Domain Name

Domain names are bought and sold all the time at sites like GoDaddy.com or BuyDomains.com.  Having the right domain name online can help establish your company’s identity.  Determine what the value of building your brand without being able to use the company name and domain you desire and compare that to what it would cost to buy the domain you want.  If the latter is less, simply buy the domain and continue moving forward. 

4.     If You Already Own The Trademark

If you already own the trademark to your company’s name, you have some options.  If you are dealing with a cybersquatter, the first, and less expensive, option is to contact ICANN and file a dispute under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy.  The cost to go this route varies as it depends on the number of domains filed in the dispute and the number of panelist required.  You can also send a cease and desist letter to the party that is “squatting” on your desired domain.  A sample letter can be found here .  While this process might be time consuming and cumbersome, it is considerably less expensive than the final option. 

5.     Seek Legal Advice

When you’ve exhausted all of your options, this might be the only one remaining.  Before going down this path, consider the time and money it might take if you try to resolve this matter with the “help” of an attorney.  If this goes to court and you win, you could have all or part of your legal expenses paid for by the other party, but be careful as you could very easily lose and incur legal expenses and still not have the name you wanted for your business. 

Unfortunately there is no one way to resolve this issue, but it is important to understand that you do have options should you encounter this problem.  It is just as important to determine how much time and money you are willing to invest before you go after the name you want.  Sometimes it’s just easier to come up with a new name.

Tagged as: active garage, Branding, business, cease and desist, Copyrights, cost, data security, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, http://activegarage.com, Identity, Intellectual Property, Leadership, legal, management, marketing, Return on Investment, Robert Driscoll, ROI, Sales and Marketing, trademark

Intellectual Property – Part IV – Finding Help

As I’ve mentioned in every article on this subject (Article I, Article II, & Article III) you need help. And you need the best help you can get.  This article is about finding and engaging the best help you can get.

From Dictionary.com: Help; verb: to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist

There are other distinctions to be sure, and for the purposes of this article I’ll be using the one above.

Here are some guidelines for gathering the help you need when creating and protecting intellectual property:

1. Be clear about you goal. If you intend to prosecute a patent, keep that in mind as you go forward.

2. Listen to your counsel and ask as many questions as you need to to make sure that you understand. Something to remember is that the help you find will by necessity be schooled in a discourse that is dissimilar to yours, anything you don’t understand will be filled in by your background and can lead to faulty assumptions.  If you have any doubt, ask.

3. Prepare as much ahead of time as possible and with as much detail as possible, before going out to find your help.

In the intellectual property realm there are basically 3 ways to prosecute the patent:

1. Engage a patent attorney:

a. tell them your invention,

b. they write it up,

c. you review it,

d. repeat b & c as many times as needed (better to get it right once) ,

e. you give them cash and they file the patent and 2 or 3 years later the USPTO issues or declines the patent.

2. Engage a patent service:

Usually patent clerks and non-licensed people help you navigate the paperwork and get the patent prepared, follow the same process as above with the exception that you file the patent yourself.

Upside: less expensive than option 1 above, and they can review your invention thoroughly; They are also not governed by the same rules and ethics as a patent attorney.

Downside: They can’t help you in a dispute; you’ll still need the patent attorney for that.

3. Do it yourself – AKA – the hard way.

a. You need to determine what forms to fill-in needed to file the patent,

b. you write up the design,

c. you review the invention write up,

d. you write a check to the USPTO and file you patent. 2-4 years later the USPTO will either grant or decline your application.

4. A combination of any of the above:

Depending on your relationship with the attorney, this option can save you thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees. That said there is a point to be made here: you will save the out of pocket cash that you don’t send to the attorney by spending your time doing the things the attorney would have done, either your time or the attorney’s time will get spent.

For all the patents I’ve filed in the past, it has been option 4 with the inventors doing some work and the patent attorney’s doing the rest. In my opinion it pays very large dividends to invest in a relationship with your patent attorney, they can and will help you.

Selecting an Attorney:

1. I can’t stress this enough, find someone that has been doing this for a while.  The rules have recently changed and you need someone that has context on how the rules changed and how it will affect you.
2. Find someone that you can work well with, you don’t have to be best friends, but you have to be able to trust them.
3. Make sure they have a successful practice (partners, clerks, other staff, etc)
4. Make sure the office is organized (it may not be neat and tidy, but it does need to be organized).
5. If they are dismissive of your concerns, walk away. You are new to this, so when you don’t understand something have them explain it, the best attorney’s will take the time to make sure you understand what they are doing for you, and why.
6. Make sure they are cognizant of the field you are inventing within. They or someone on their staff will need relevant exposure to the field, or you will spend a lot of time and therefore cash, explaining your invention to them (don’t take an oil drilling patent to a computer software patent attorney).
7. You must be willing to walk away from the meeting without signing anything if you don’t feel right. You should feel no high pressure from the attorney.

With all these things taken into account, get to know your patent counsel; they are usually great folks, who want to help you. I have had patent attorneys point out derivative inventions that I had missed; if I’d had a poor relationship with them they may not have done that. What started as one patent became three.  On the other hand, sometime they will recommend combining patents (if you submit several related patents at once, I’ve had four patents become one), this will save you cash during your filing and probably give you better protections.

Another point to remember is that patents are not mysterious, magical things. They are practical, and denote a professional demeanor for your business. They can enhance the desirability for acquisition if that is your exit strategy, they can protect your marketplace and allow others to create markets with you.

Get started! … find a patent attorney that you can work well with, brainstorm with people you like to work with, invent something new, and bring it to the marketplace.

Tagged as: business, Copyrights, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, IP, Leadership, Patents

Intellectual Property – Part III – Brainstorming

As I mentioned last week, this article is on brainstorming, this is the FUN part!!

Brainstorming is the process of creating new ideas and refining ideas into a something that may be unique and non-obvious. There are a few rules to have a successful brainstorming session, but they are ironclad, breaking any one of these rules will close down creativity and stifle participation from the people that your are brainstorming with.

Above All, being creative and inventing new products and services is a Learned Skill that can be developed just like reading, writing or golf.

Rules:

1. There are no bad ideas! Even ones that appear “bad” or misinformed or even flat our incorrect can be used as a springboard into good, new, and non-obvious inventions.

2. No one tanks on anyone else’s idea! Each person and their ideas are treated with dignity and respect, no criticism allowed (see point 1). If you have a team that tends to be critical of each other that is great, correct the problem and you will have a great team.  One approach is to inject humor into the meeting; this lightens the mood, opens space for more creativity and gives room for dumping old ideas and building new ones.

For example: A brainstorming meeting I had while working at Boeing, we were all given loaded squirt guns at the beginning of the meeting with instructions that if anyone tanked on someone else we would all squirt that person, at the end of the meeting we were all soaked, and we had all solved two problems:

a. We had a solution to our original need for the brainstorming and;

b. We had a tighter team that worked better together….plus; we got to keep the squirt guns.

3. Open your mind and look for the new thing in the pile of the old. This rule builds on rules 1 and 2.  Even old ideas can be applied to now situations to create new products and services.  Ideas from one industry can be stripped down and applied to another industry.

For Example: I have a patent submission to the USPTO (application number 20080313598) that is an application of a targeting solution algorithm to the problem of project management.

There are many places where new application of a previous idea is appropriate and creates new products or services that haven’t existed before. Even if the old ideas are not fruitful you will begin to develop the practice of creativity.

4. You MUST have fun! Anything less creates drudge and that will kill your creativity and make brainstorming a chores rather than a pleasure.

Ok, Let’s get started!

A bit of housekeeping:

1. Someone will need to act as the scribe. This is a very important task and it should not be the same person each time, indeed if you can change the scribe during the session you will get better results, as everyone will have a chance to participate fully.
2. The ideas should also be in a place where everyone can see them, preferably on a white board, large paper pad, or chalk board. As the ideas come and go you can cross them off and keep going.
3. Set a definite start and stop time, this discourages flights into fantasy and people becoming tired, 1 hour is a good time frame, less and you don’t cover enough ground, more and it becomes labor.

Seed Ideas: these are ideas used to start the process; I want to reiterate that these may or may not be the final invention.  The idea is to let your imagination run freely, without regard to whether what you are thinking is reasonable, difficult or even possible.  Write everything that comes to mind down.

For example: if you are in the mechanical tool space, you start with the idea of a socket wrench that can reach into a blind spot to work on a bolt. This is already available commercially; however this is a starting point of the invention definition.  What other problems are solvable with this type of tool, how might they be solved better, faster, cheaper, easier. How about a wrench that is guided with an endoscope like camera and can be steered through a complex path to work on a bolt? Magnetic Head? Grippers? All these are valid inventions.

The point is nothing is out of bounds; you can combine ideas from multiple people and multiple disciplines to get the best inventions.

Document: As each idea is written on the whiteboard, paper pad or chalk board by the scribe , all the contributors can look at it, give it a rating, and then if they know of any prior art they speak up at that point (another reason not to tank on anyone, you need the candor in the conversation). Change scribes frequently.

You can look up prior art with a few search terms. You can search the USPTO or Google Patents for prior art.  This won’t replace a good patent search, but it will make a great first cut. If you find prior art all is not lost, you can read the previous patent and design a new patent to fill the gaps left by the previous one, or bring new technology to bear on the same problem.

Wrap Up: when you have about 5-10 minutes left in your session, it’s time to start wrapping things up. This means you select the best ideas that you have (you will have eliminated some) and write them down cleanly and coherently. These will be the basis for your patent search and your disclosure if you decide to continue.

You will need to document who was in the room, the date and time, give the idea a name of the form “Method and Apparatus for….” Fill in the blank with the solution description. Finally have everyone sign the bottom of the description.  You’re done!  Give everyone else a “High-5” and get on with your day.

Next Week: Finding Help

Tagged as: business, Copyrights, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, IP, Leadership, Patents

Intellectual Property – Templates
As I promised in my last post, last week: this week is about templates for the creation of intellectual property.
A quick reminder is in order: I said in the first article in this series: you need help, and you need the best help you can get. Seek out and establish a relationship with the best patent counsel that you can find (more on that in Part 4 of the series).

At the time of this writing, there are nearly 130 official forms pertaining to the filing of patents only with the patent office. This article only describes the preliminary process, you will need legal counsel to help with the filing.

While templates are not a panacea for the creative process, they can help organize your thinking and help ensure that there are fewer gaps that can create problems.
The patent filing templates I’ve included here are comprehensive and by no means complete; they are intended to get you started and are no substitute for appropriate legal counsel. That out of the way, let’s get started:

First I will start with templates to assist in clarification of the thinking around the idea, then on to the initial protection, followed by the permanent protection, identification, power of attorney and assignment documents.

Patent Filing Documents:
-Initial Description – or “Do I really need to file a patent”?
This is a critical look at the product or service that you are thinking of patenting. It is coupled to the patent disclosure form below and if you think carefully and ground all of your thinking in facts only, you will know at the end if you should proceed.

– Provisional Patent Filing – Quick very broad protection for a limited time.

Since June 8, 1995, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has offered inventors the option of filing a provisional application for patent which was designed to provide a lower-cost first patent filing in the United States. Applicants are entitled to claim the benefit of a provisional application in a corresponding non-provisional application filed not later than 12 months after the provisional application filing date– Sample

The benefit to a provisional filing is that it starts the clock running on patentability.
For example: XYZ Company files a provisional patent on January 1st 2009, and ABC company files provisional patent for an essentially similar invention on June 1st 2009; patentability is in favor of the first provisional filing. It gets protection started earlier, even though you may not have all the information you need to file a non-provisional patent.

If you have all the information you need, skip the provisional and file a non-provisional patent.

Provision Filing Fees, like all filing fees are subject to change, current fees are listed here

– Patent Filing – More detailed and more thorough protection

There are very handy guides on the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) website for patent filings of various types. The links to the guides are here:
For Utility Patents
For Design Patents

– Declarations – Who is filing this patent?

The patent declarations are required as part of the patent filing process to determine the inventors’ names, addresses and country of citizenship. Something to remember here: anything you put here will be a public record for at least 25 years. That said, you might want to think about putting only your city instead of your street address when filling in the declarations document.

Sample document

– Power of Attorney – helping someone help you

When you find an attorney that you like and that you assess is appropriate for you to work with you will need to file a Power of Attorney document, so that they may represent you to the patent office, each attorney will have their own document, they will differ in format and may have slightly different content, however for the most part that will contain the same information.

Sample Document

– Assignments – Who actually can exploit the intellectual property described by the patent?

Assignments are important in the world we live and work in today. Patent assignments create enterprise value in that they become the property of the business entity that owns them. Assignments are made at the point of filing the patent and the assignment is part of the patent filing with the patent office. Each patent lawyer will have their own, and as with declarations and power of attorney documents they will all contain similar information.

Sample document

In some cases the attorney will combine documents into a single document, this makes keep track of all the information easier for all concerned.

Have fun, there is much to learn and it changes all the time.

Once again: You need help, get it!!

Next Week:  Brainstorming New Ideas

Tagged as: business, Copyrights, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Leadership, Patents

Intellectual Property (IP) – Creation & Exploitation

From Wikipedia: “… legal property rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets.”

Definitions:

Patent: A patent is the right given by the government to the exclusive right to exploit an invention for a limited time in return for disclosing the invention.

Copyright: a copyright is a right given by the government to a publication for a limited time for any idea that is expressed in a fixed medium (books, film, recordings, etc).

Trademark: A trademark is a distinctive label, sign or indicator used to identify products or services supplied by a single individual, business or other entity.

Industrial design rights: Industrial design rights are intellectual property rights that protest the look and feel of inventions.  Covered are shape, size, color, physical design and or any combination of all of these factors.

Trade Secret: A trade secret is any formula, practice, design, tooling or instrumentation that is not easily derivable nor generally known, used by a business or individual to create and maintain a durable market advantage over competitors.

Reason’s for filing for intellectual property rights protection:

1. Economic exploitation of original work – first and foremost IP protection provides for a limited monopoly in which the owner can exploit their creation for profit.  As a business develops IP they are then free to market and develop additional products and derive further IP to increase the enterprise value of the business. Licensing or sale of the IP to someone that can further exploit the market is a valid business reason to file for IP protection.

2. Protect future business directions from encumbrances – Many businesses create a large patent portfolio in their chosen area of competency in order to fend off competition.  Failure to do this can lead a company to find themselves constrained and unable to continue to innovate on their preferred product road-map and either scrambling to re-innovate around their competition or watching their competition walk away with the market.

3. Constraining competition – Related to #2 above, this method is used to prevent either casual or intentional incursion into the enterprise’s market space. In most cases these are patents that may never be economically exploited but will be vigorously defended to prevent the marketplace and the identity and brand of a company from becoming diluted (think of Kleenex).

Why patent anything?

This is a simple question to answer: because you need to in order to compete in the marketplace.  If you invent a new product, service, practice or addition and don’t protect it, your competition will.  When your competition completes their protective efforts you will be constrained from producing the product or held as an economic hostage in the form of royalties and perhaps punitive payments for the production of the product that you invented.

Another reason to prepare a patent filing has nothing to do with protecting anything; and has everything to do with clarification of thinking on the design.  In order to prepare a complete patent filing, you are required to think through the patent carefully, this can illuminate many places in the design where it is weak, flawed, something is missing or the thinking is incomplete, and creates the space to remedy that part of the design.

What is required to patent an idea?

There are 4 things needed to support a patent filing:

1. Invention needs to be New, Useful and Non-Obvious.
2. A patent search to determine if any prior art exists (prior art is the term for someone else having thought of the invention earlier), or if the prior art applies.
3. A good patent description.  There are many things that go into this piece of the plan, for a hint follow this link:  http://www.novelthink.com/novelthink/enough.html
4. Consult a patent attorney.  Patents cost a fair amount of money to file, the more work you do up front that less you pay the attorney, however, they can save more than they cost if the prevent you from filing a disclosure that will fail. Build a relationship with a local attorney, it will be very helpful.

Why copyright anything?

This is also simple to address: you don’t have to.  The copyrights of all works exist by default with no need to do anything.  As additional protection the work can be filed with the copyright office http://www.copyright.gov . Having obtained a copyright the owner now has the ability to seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees from violators. Without the filing the question falls to who invented first.

Do I need an Attorney?

Technically speaking the answer is “No”, however, practically speaking engaging with an attorney as a form of help is very desirable.

For example: there are many terms used in filing a patent that legally either open or close the claim statement. http://www.bpmlegal.com/patgloss.html Ignorance of these can severely change the protections granted by the patent. You will need help, so get it!

Summary:

Intellectual property rights protection is important in today’s business environment if the business is delivering products for profit and wishes to build a durable market advantage over their competition.  Failure to do so can result in loss of the market that the business has built.

That said there is no single template for what or how to patent or copyright any specific item and there are almost as many ways to file a patent as people filing them, and as many as have been filed.  I have nearly 300 patent submissions and all differ from each other in some way.

So, do the research, write the patent, talk with an attorney and invent something new, useful and non-obvious!

Next week – Templates!

Tagged as: business, Copyrights, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, IP, Leadership, Patents