It’s not that patents are bad. It’s just that you can’t trust them to protect your business from competition. In Should I Start This Business on the Bplans Blog, Sabrina Parsons reflects on a recommendation to explore patents in a startup:
This is solid advice. I just want to add a caveat. Patents will not protect you. They are good to have, investors like them, but your competitors will find ways around them (if the solution is that good, believe me they will). Proving patent infringement is also a long and costly process that would most likely kill your business. So please, go ahead and get a patent, but then put a strategy in place to market the heck out of your solution — so that when someone copies it you are the true front runner with the best quality solution.
The kill your business phrase might be a bit strong, but cost a lot of money, yes. So you might also budget some money for legal fees, because having a patent implies having the money to monitor infringement and take action to prevent it.
You might also have some money ready for legal evaluation of the defensibility of a patent. Some are much less defensible than others. Sometimes an expert in the technology area can give you a reading on how strong your patent is and how competitors might work around it.
This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 9:34 pm and is filed under startup advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “In Patents I Trust — Not”
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October 16th, 2007 at 10:22 am
I have two product ideas that would be cheap and easy to make. I thought I would need a patent for them,but maybe not. The little bit of research I have done with regards to a patent,seems as if they would be expensive to get one. How do you decide if a patent is a good business objective and does the cost of a patent vary with the cost of the product? Can you find out how much it would cost ahead of time to get a patent?
Also,I do not know who I can share these ideas with and I have no idea where to go from here. But I think the ideas are good and would be successful. The target audience would be children (ages 3-13 years). I have some money saved. Please advise-thank you.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:44 am
In patents you may not trust but beware of Patent Trolls. I suggest to spend your money on doing a Prior Art survey instead of an application for a patent. Make sure your idea or invention is not infringing any patent and just go and do it. If you manufacture a new product that might be included in a patent, be sure there are people out there who trust patents and that they will get to you on patent infringement.