Commercialization Choices and Intellectual Property Protection

Most inventors start their thinking about protecting their invention in the wrong place.  They often decide their first step should be to get a patent.  They do this without asking the very important question of Why they want the patent? A patent is only one way to protect your investment in your idea and whether or not you should seek one depends most significantly on what you intend do to with the ideas.

To turn your idea into reality you need to "commercialize" it and  there are two main routes towards commercialization and both are difficult.  You can make and market the invention yourself or you can sell the rights to someone else.  You can learn a lot about your choices from this article in my blog  Patent Choices Blog Article.

The kind of intellectual property protection you seek depends on which method you choose.  For example, if you make the product yourself you can keep it as a trade secret and never  seek a patent.  Coca Cola has used this approach for more than 100 years very successfully.  Its also possible to publicly disclose your  invention.  This prevents someone else from patenting it and is a good strategy if you believe you can dominate the market without the protections of a patent monopoly.  Often a copyright or trademark is sufficient protection, this is often the strategy used by software companies.

However, if you wish to sell your idea to someone else, you need to establish ownership of it.  The best and strongest way to do that is with a patent.  Even if you were to go through the difficult exercise of negotiating a contract to sell your idea you would still have to define it for the purpose of the contract which would be very difficult task,  and you would not have established that someone else doesn't already own the idea, something that is established for you as  part of the patent process