Manage it properly and it will produce for you.

Many inventors and companies think that the end of their IP process is in obtaining a patent on their invention and surely that is an important milestone.  However in some ways its just the beginning of the process of turning an idea into an asset.   A patent must be maintained like any other asset.   At the very least patent office maintenance fees which many inventors are not aware of, or forget about, must be paid on time.   If not the patent office will declare the patent as abandoned and all the funds spent to obtain it will be wasted.

This situation occurs more often when a company has multiple patents in a portfolio.   The fees to maintain these quickly pile up and can be a drain on the business.   If the patent is not being used to protect a company's product, the company might consider allowing it to lapse and save the fees.   However there is another alternative and that is to license the patent to someone who will use it.  This is particularly attractive when the other party is not a competitor but intends to use the patent to protect a non competing product.

Besides the payment of maintenance fees the company should be alert to others who may be using the patented technology without paying for it.   This misuse is sometimes obvious, as when a direct competitor brings out a product which uses  the protected technology, but it is not always so obvious if the competitor uses the technology for another purpose or the competitor is located in another part of the world.

If the invention is not protected by a World patent, it may still be enforced should the competitor bring the products which use it into the US.  So for example if a German company uses your patent to make a product in Germany,  you cannot enforce the patent against them,  but if they then choose to export that product to the US,  you have the right to block its entrance at the port of entry.

This it is important to monitor all uses of the patented technology.  In today's Internet connected world that might be done semi-automatically by the creation of  continuing Internet searches which flag possible offenders.         Google Alerts is one tool that might be used effectively in this fashion.   If you would like help in setting up a patent  use monitoring system,  give BML a call.

 Just  check us out at www.alacartepatents.com , write us at rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or  give us a call at  (585) 520-3539  

Finding Hidden Revenue 

and Avoiding Bankruptcy

Every company would like to make more revenue.  But most companies look for that revenue in the same place they have been doing all their other activities.  

They try  to sell  the same products to the same customers.   They may try to sell more of those products or they might want to sell them more often, but  they are going back to the same well ploughed field looking for  undiscovered  gold and usually not finding it.

At OA we teach clients that they need to get out of their "Business Comfort Zone"  and make changes to attract new revenues.   They may find new  or improved products to sell to existing customers [we call that Quadrant III]  or  find new customers for their existing products [Quadrant II], or the most risky , different and potentially most valuable , selling new products to new  customers [Quadrant IV].

All of these approaches require change, new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things.  They also take time.  Its so much easier to keep doing things the same old ways.   But that is the recipe for decay and eventually decline of the business as the world moves on to new ways of doing things.

A once great company that I worked for learned this unhappy story when it recently filed for bankruptcy.  Actually the invention of OA came from my experiences at the Great Yellow Box (Eastman Kodak).  It wasn't that Kodak didn't have lots of new product ideas to exploit.  It had patented 40,000 of them.  The problem was that it didn't successfully exploit them.  

The few grand ideas the company tied (such as getting into the drug business) fell flat.   And many very good ideas  were squashed by an  internal power structure dedicated to the dying cash cow of photographic  film.

At OA we teach companies how to compare their growth possibilities rationally and on the same basis and to make choices among them.  It is as bad a strategy to try too many new things and under resource them as it is to try too few new things.  Kodak did both. 

 One of the saddest parts of this story shows that Kodak didn't have to end the way it did.     A company facing almost the same situation as Kodak, its arch rival Fuji,   succeeded in making the tough decisions  and is still prosperous.

Don't  wait until you are almost bankrupt to change how you do things.   Get out of your business comfort zone.  Contact Opportunity Associates and let us show you how.