Companies don't monetize their inventions well. Sometimes they never collect the ideas their employees develop and the ideas walk out the door when the employees leave. Sometimes companies unknowingly infringe the patents of others leaving themselves open to costly lawsuits. Sometimes they lose revenue by not licensing their portfolios.
In a recent talk Patent Attorney Tracy Jong and I identified 5 common mistakes that companies make regarding their inventions that will cost them time and money.
1. Not establishing Freedom to Use
Most people are surprised to learn that a patent does not give you the right to make or use an invention. It just means you can prevent others from doing so. If you unknowingly use someone else’s patent you open yourself to costly lawsuits.
2: Ignoring Licensing Opportunities
Not seeking licensing revenues from non-core uses of your patents. The extra revenue your earn from patent license is “sleep money”. Its earned for doing nothing extra (excluding any legal costs associated with drafting a license). If you ignore licensing opportunities its like throwing away cash.
3. Not Getting Intellectual Property Agreements with Staff
Bill Gates once said that the main assets of Microsoft walked out the front door at 5PM. Valuable inventions can go right out the door with those workers. The ideas in their heads that are never patented and those projects that they worked on while at your company may later be patented by competitors.
4. Letting Competitors Patent your Inventions
While you don’t have to patent your inventions, you do have to protect them. If you don’t you face another challenge, someone can patent something you invented and keep you from practicing it.
5. Not Protecting Valuable Inventions
Once you have invested the dollars to create something you need to be able to sell enough of those objects to recoup your investment or you have lost money. If someone else is able to copy your invention with impunity, that may never happen.
Patent Strategy deals with these and other issues. Contact us and we will help you with them. Here’s some links that will also help you find resources to deal with these issues- www.ideas-to-assets.com, www.alacartepatents.com , www.ittrifecta.com
In my opinion there should be full freedom to use new and branding strategies. Then only there will happen something that can be highly implicative.
Posted by: hire a web programmer | July 23, 2011 at 01:14 AM