TOP 5 Patent mistakes that businesses make and how to avoid them.
1. Selling Your Invention Before Obtaining Adequate Patent Protection
The typical scenario is an inventor who came up with a great invention, manufactured the product and the product has taken off. Now the inventor wants to protect the invention, a year later. You can’t patent an invention if it has been on sale for 12 months. You must file for patent protection before your product has been in the market for 12 months.
2. Disclosing Your Invention to the Public Before Proper Patent Protection.
You can’t patent an invention which is known to the public for 12 months. If you share your invention with your friends, online, on social media, or with others, you have 12 months from the date of that first disclosure to patent your invention.
3. No Prior Art Search
A patent search will reveal patented inventions which will allow you to not infringe upon other patents or see whether or not your invention is patentable. A common mistake is that some innovators will decide to save money and skip doing a patent search but begin production of the product they are developing. A significant investment in inventory is created but a cease-and-desist letter appears from a patent owner with a demand to stop selling those products. By then, the damage is done, and the financial outlay is overwhelmingly painful. Before investing in inventory, do a patent search.
4. Filing A Bad Provisional Application
A lot of inventors who decide to do a provisional patent application on their own, insist on the fact that they have a priority date. However, when examined thoroughly, the application is a lean, one-page, lacking the required specificity and detail required for proper protection. Filling out a lean form does not guarantee patent protection. You can only get a priority date for the exact details disclosed.
5. Spending Too Much or Too Little on Patent Protection
A) Spending Too Little
Filing for patent protection can cost you anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000 depending on the complexity of your work, and many businesses fail to allocate proper funds to this entire process or try to take dangerous cost cutting measures such as skipping the professional search. You wouldn’t want to lose your patent protection because you can’t afford maintenance fees.
B) Spending Too Much
Patent protection is a business expense. While you might want to protect your work around the globe, be realistic about which markets outside the US, if any, you will go into.
Before you order anything online for resale do your due diligence.
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