I have several ideas that I could use for patents. I am not sure if ideas on their own can be patented or if it needs to be a design or solution. But my question is - Patent filing is expensive and time consuming. So if I have several ideas, and want to discuss partnering with someone who could spend the money on trying to apply for patent(s), how do I make sure that my ideas are secured and will not be stolen if the other party doesn't like it? Is it possible to get funding to apply for patents?
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One question to consider is why you want to file a patent in the first place. Is it because you feel like you need to protect the idea behind a product? If so, unfortunately (or fortunately) there is no independent patent police that prosecutes infringements on the behalf of a patent assignee. That means that a patent just buys you the option of spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars down the road on lawyers to try to enforce it. I would suggest that your time and money is better spent actually developing the product and getting some early traction in the market. When it looks like you have a success on your hands and you have plenty of money available then it might be the right time to file*. Also, don't worry too much about people stealing your ideas. There are a lot of people in the world and others have undoubtedly had the same ideas you have. Ideas are cheap, execution is what counts. *You probably won't find a lawyer that agrees with me on this. I think the reason is that the job of lawyers is to identify all risks no matter how tiny and eliminate them. As entrepreneurs, our job is to prioritize the 200 risks facing us today and devote our limited resources to beating back the top few. The risk of not having a patent is probably one that can wait. |
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Academic research shows that patents are great if you try to patent a molecule (drug or chemical). For all other patentable inventions, they don't hurt you, but they rarely help you. True, there are rare cases where a patent for something other then a molecule was profitable, but that is rarely the case. First thin you should do is make sure that you are the first to invent you invention. If you find it in a patent search (which was done in uspto.gov in the past, but Google it now better) or if you read about it online, it is not patentable. If you still want to file a patent, I suggest filing a provisional patent, which costs little money compared to a regular patent (The filing is the cheap part) and then spend the next 30 months (the time you have to file claims around the world if you file according to the PCT2 treaty) trying to raise capital for your business. If you succeed, then you now have the budget to file around the world and defend your application (a process that can be ridiculously expensive). If you don't manage to convince anyone to invest in you in 30 months, the odds you will be able to do so later are very low, and you should move on to your next project. One more side not, if you have the option of developing an invention with a respected university, you might want to consider doing so, because they have the resources to file around the world, and no self respecting company will try to rip them off... If you go on your own, you will get more of the profits, but you are far more likely to end up loosing everything. Good luck! |
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