Patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and defense publications are methods utilized to protect innovation. In your intellectual property strategy, you should utilize them effectively, and when possible, use them concurrently.
Patents can be the ‘Golden Goose’ for your firm. However, they are expensive: expensive to apply, expensive to maintain, and not to mention, they are time consuming. With all that, they don’t necessarily guarantee defensibility in the face of litigation, which is also expensive. Recently Guy Kawasaki’s blog included a discussion on “Counterpoint: Patents and Defensibility” which is compiled by three patent attorneys. The blog provides a good, broad introduction on using patents in the defense of innovation, particularly focused on the needs of start-ups. Make sure to check it out.
If patents are the cornerstones of your intellectual property strategy, you should follow a few guidelines to ensure they are also your ‘Golden Goose’ in order to get your return on your investment.
1. Determine the intellectual property protection strategy that would best support your business goals. Also establish a cross-functional (not just R&D) patent review committee that will evaluate your ideas and innovations accordingly to identify the best protection for them. Potential factors to consider when making the decision should include: benefit of patenting vs. other protection strategies, commercialization potential of the invention, business strategy alignment, as well as the economic potential from the use or licensing of technology.
2. Prior to filing your patent, determine the necessary scope for your innovation. In many cases, the claims presented the in the patent application correspond to the current application area for your innovation. Your goal should be to achieve “broad coverage” without infringing on “prior art”. If your coverage is narrow, it opens itself up for “design around”, if it is too broad it will probably be rejected due to prior art. Before filing your patent, reviewing your competitors’ products and patents should be part of your scope determination process.
3. If you have specific business goals, such as licensing of your innovation for building new revenue stream, do your homework carefully. Build your business case for licensing strategy, outline the various use cases and scenarios, map out your innovation’s value chain, understand your market and potential customers, and make sure to cover incremental variations of your core technology to prevent potential design arounds.
4. Don’t forget to analyze your technology’s life cycle and plan it into your patent strategy. Technology life cycle, which follows a simple S curve, describes the stages that a technology goes through during its lifetime: emerging, growth, maturity, and decline. With that, your intellectual property protection strategy should reflect the stage that your technology is in. As an example, be cautious on doing full blown patent investments during emerging stage, look for areas of process innovation to support your maturing technology, while searching for new markets or industries to enter to during the decline phase. Given the importance of timing with patents, your patent strategy should reflect the timing of necessary actions. Check out the Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape
by Henry Chesbrough for more information on aligning your IP strategy with technology life cycle.
In summary, your patent strategy should be reflective of your business goals and objectives. Building an intellectual property strategy and determining the role patents play within it, and following few guidelines, such as establishing a patent review committee will help increase the chances of better returns for your investments.
