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 Newsletter - December 2012
  This newsletter is for the benefit of: our customers both current and past, our workers , board members and friends including those of you we haven't talked to recently. Please feel free to forward to others who might be interested in our activities.   Please realize that this newsletter contains only our opinions on patent matters.  We are not authorized to give legal advice.  If you are seeking such advice please contact an attorney.

Trade Secrets

And other ways to protect your Intellectual Property

 

I'm a patent guy and most of the time I'm helping people protect their intellectual property by getting a patent on it.  But that isn't the only way to keep control of your IP and sometimes it isn't even the best way.

 

Some time ago I wrote a blog article on all the different ways you can protect your IP and that article is linked here.  I thought it was time to revisit the subject with a particular focus on trade secrets.

 

I've recently been working with a customer on a patent which will combine patented material with material he wished to keep as a trade secret.   There are certain advantages to trade secrets that don't apply to patents (and certain disadvantages as well).

 

The most famous trade secret is the formula for Coca Cola.  Its over 100 years old and has never been discovered despite the best efforts of Coke's competitors to do so.

 

If Coke had patented its formula , the secret would have been out in 20 years (17 at the time)  because a patent requires disclosure of an invention.  So that highlights one big advantage of a trade secret,  it has a potentially infinite life.

 

But the life of a trade secret is only potentially infinite, for if anyone had discovered Coke's secret formula, there would be nothing to stop them from making the product.   And that illustrates one of the disadvantages of Trade Secrets.  If they are easily uncovered [for example by reverse engineering]  there is nothing to stop someone from using them.

 

Worse,  there is also nothing to stop someone from patenting your trade secret and blocking  you from using it (this by the way may change under a provision of the new America Invents Act but it has been true up until now).

 

So if you are considering keeping something a trade secret you had better be able to keep it secret and take active steps to do so.  If you have an employee who leaves you and takes the secret with him/her to another company, you will have to prove to the court that the material the employee took was treated as a secret within the company [market secret, kept in locked files etc]. Also all employees need to have signed IP agreements with the firm promising to protect the company's intellectual property

 

If you know your invention can easily be reverse engineered you are better off patenting it.  Combining patent and trade secret protection can be complicated and requires the help of a skilled patent attorney or agent.

 

If you aren't sure what way to go or what to do, contact us.  

 

To learn more just send us an email to

rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or  give us a call at       (585) 520-3539  

 

 

 

 

 

 

ITTr Logo
Are you ready to  license?
how to find out
 
Often people come to ITTr asking us to help sell or license their invention without owning something that is licensible.  If you are going to sell the rights to make or market something to someone else, you need to first establish that you own that invention.   That usually means that you need to have established some kind of intellectual property protection such as a patent, copyright or trademark.  ITTr has dealt with all kinds of IP.   However, sometimes inventors think that their idea is so great that someone else will pay all the cost of protecting it.  This is almost never true.   I've not encountered that situation directly in 35 years, and I've only read about such payments when the inventor is working for a large firm or university which will cover those costs.  Of course,  then the inventor's only compensation is his or her salary.

The most rudimentary level of protection can be established by filing for a provisional patent, which can be quite inexpensive if you do it yourself [of course the provisional may have little value unless you really know what you are doing].
 
But establishing ownership is only the first step in marketing your invention.   Equally important is establishing its value in the eyes of prospective customers.  The most effective way of doing that is to actually make and market the invention in small quantities.   We have clients who have been quite successful doing this on QVC.  Of course going on QVC is not easy , and a complete discussion of doing so could easily be a whole other article.
 
To help our  prospective customers know what they have and how close they are to licensing it,  ITTr has established the ROTH scoring system.  A high ROTH score [at least 65] is a good indication that the invention is ready to be sold.  A lower ROTH score  indicates that more work needs to be done to get the invention ready for the market place.  All an inventor need do , is look at those questions which were scored low to determine what that work might be.
 
Filling our a ROTH is easy and requires answering 10 multiple choice questions.   If you answer the questions carefully and accurately you should have a good idea of the value and saleabilty of your invention.

If you want help selling your patent or finding a patent to help your company grow and want us to find the key buyers and make these calls then contact us at ITTr.
    

Email : rblazey@ittrifecta.com

Phone: (585) 520-3539 

www.ITTrifecta.com

  

Penguin Logo  
VOC vs Surveys and Focus Groups

The Penguin Group helps you learn about your customers using various techniques.  One of those techniques used by our Market Sonar process, is Voice of the Customer [VOC] calling.
 
There are many well known market research techniques from questionnaires filled in online or in person to elaborate and costly focus groups.
 
Each of these methods has its place, and often the best results use a combination of methods.  At Penguin we believe in the unique value of VOC in that it is open ended as to customer input.
 
To prepare a questionnaire or even a focus group requires you guess what your customer might be thinking.  Such surveys constrain the answers a customer might give and exclude unstructured suggestions that they might make.
 
For this reason, major product developers such as Apple often avoid using focus groups and questionnaires.  They tend to agree with Henry Ford's famous quip.  If I'd asked my customers what they wanted before we developed the Model T, they would have said "faster horses".
 
That observation is why we carefully craft our calling scripts with the client to allow for customers to say what they really think about a product area.  Asking about their frustrations with how the problem the product deals with is currently solved is often a fruitful approach.
 
We collect the customers responses and forward them to you. Often the results are surprising as when a customer found that his target market didn't like his new product but that a market he had dismissed was enthusiastic about it.
 
To learn more about Market Sonar and the other Penguin products just log on to our website   Or call me at (585) 520-3539 or email at rblazey@rochester.rr.com
We appreciate your responses to our newsletters.  Please send us your comments.  We are always interested in what you want to know.
 
Sincerely,
 

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC

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