HOW TO WEB TEST YOUR IDEA BEFORE YOU EMPTY YOUR PIGGY BANK We’ve all heard this story somewhere before, inventor self funds idea and mortgages their house only to go bankrupt in the process and finding there is no market for their idea. It’s a sad story heard over and over again, yes its important to have a strong maybe even naive belief that your idea is incredible though you should use all of your available tools to test what everyone else thinks of it too before losing years and thousands of dollars. When Vitor and myself came up with...
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Getting the most out of your intellectual property without breaking the bank
One of the earliest and most important questions for any budding entrepreneur is: ‘How do I protect my idea?’. When creating a company, needing to attract investors, and wanting to capitalize on your product in the market, a patent is incredibly important. Many companies are bought and sold purely for their patent portfolio.
That being said, a patent can potentially be incredibly expensive. If you like watching The Shark Tank (like us), you’ve probably seen instances where inventors need investments, as they’ve already spent their life savings on lawyers just to process the patent. This can run anywhere from $25k-$125k. Often, this is done before even receiving proof of concept (that the idea works in a prototype) or even knowing if the market is willing to buy the product.
Here lies the predicament: how can I develop my product and then test it on the open market without someone stealing it and without spending my life’s savings? This has been the MOST asked question we’ve received from people attempting their own Kickstarter concepts.
Here are some steps that we hope will help protect your idea and take it to the next level of development.
1/ Before going through any patent process, it’s very important to develop and prototype the idea. Most concepts change drastically from where they originate. Therefore, you shouldn’t patent too early or it will be worthless. Though, you still need to share and develop your idea with many parties such as mechanical engineers, designers, contractors, etc. In order to share the idea without having it stolen, it is very important to have every person along the way sign an NDA (non disclosure agreement). This is important for two reasons. One, it will protect you if one of these people attempts to copy your idea. Two, if somebody one day does copy your idea and takes you to court, your patent could be found to be invalid if it can be demonstrated that you shared the idea publicly without an NDA in place. Here are a couple of samples you may download from Elance and Nolo.
3/ Filing a patent is the most costly part of any patent process. The cheapest way to get started is to file a provisional patent. This can cost anywhere between $3,500-5,000 depending on where your law firm is located within the US. Spending money on a good lawyer is the safest way to protect your design for 12 months. That being said $3,500-5,000 is a lot of money when you have a design that may or may not be successful. Therefore, a far cheaper approach is to file a patent in legalzoom.com. Here, you can file a full patent for around $500. Be sure to add as much detail as you can so that it is as robust as possible. If the idea is successful you may then pass this patent to a professional lawyer to write it up correctly.
4/ Let’s say you’ve now got funding and the market loves your idea. You now need to find a good lawyer to follow up on the PCT or provisional patent. Lawyers seem to have a bad reputation and are the butt of many jokes, though in our experience we have found patent lawyers to be very easy to deal with and excited to work with us. When hiring a lawyer, you will obviously need to interview them first. In our experience, patent lawyers are more than happy to spend a half hour on the phone, providing advice about what you need, before moving on. It’s important to be clear and transparent about your business and financial situation. This will better help both parties determine a good fit. Once you do interview a lawyer, they can very quickly get into complicated legal jargon (this is second nature to them). Always be sure to have them explain anything you don’t understand and provide you with a checklist and time line of the patent process. Make sure you are clear on what needs to be paid at each checkpoint in the process, as well. It is extremely important that you be a very active participant in this process to get the strongest patent possible.
5/ Finally, all patents need to be approved by a government authority. The government will assess whether the idea should have patent protection applied to it. Before this, products will often display a “Patent Pending” logo to discourage other companies from copying the idea. Once your patent is successful you will then receive a certificate similar to this below.
We are obviously not lawyers so please take our words ‘with a grain of salt’. Though it can sometimes be easier to understand the complicated process from someone who has recently gone through the process themselves. We really hope this encourages you all to follow through with your ideas without being discouraged by the impending legal costs.
If you have any suggestions for future articles then please do not hesitate to email info@hiddenradiodesign.com or via twitter @hiddenradio.
All the best and keep creating!
John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen
Co-Founder HIDDEN
