The Best Way To Protect Your Invention? Try Stealing It From Yourself
View(s):The inquiries I receive the most often from people who have ideas for new products relate to theft, by far. Forget testing. Forget marketability. Forget strategy. I hear fear, followed by more fear.
How can I protect my invention?
Will a patent stop my idea from being stolen?
I get it. Anyone who has had an original idea has worried someone else is going to take it. People who have never brought an idea to market will declare with complete confidence that you need a patent.
These questions are somewhat frustrating, if I’m being honest, because protection is a small piece of the commercialization puzzle — particularly for consumer product ideas that will enter and leave the market within a matter of years, if that. (For a game-changing innovation, you will need a wall of intellectual property to establish and defend your ownership.)
If your product is successful enough, competitors will enter the market. That’s the reality. Hope and pray that happens! You can and should take steps to prepare for and mitigate the damage. But the notion that you can prevent or stop others from benefitting from your hard work and creativity entirely is naïve. Remember: The most powerful companies in the world cannot stop knockoffs and me-too products.
If that sounds harsh, try changing your mindset. I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life. After defending my intellectual property in federal court against one of the world’s largest toy companies, this is my perspective.
I don’t think companies steal inventions. I do know they sometimes work around them.
Don’t just take my word for it.
“As a product design engineer, I can confirm that companies pay their hired guns to design around patents,” Dion Damato shared in a comment on my YouTube channel. “Good companies in competitive markets understand the patent mine field in their market space and work toward innovating in the space between the mines, aka patents.” Damato has more than 15 years of experience developing products that integrate mechanical and electrical systems with firmware.
So, what can you do? Instead of getting emotional, focus on outthinking the competition. If someone wanted to work around you, how would they?
In other words, try stealing your invention from yourself.
Would you slightly alter the shape? The material? What about alternative manufacturing methods? Brainstorm all of the scenarios in which your invention could be used, not just the main one you had in mind when you conceived of it. Challenge yourself.
To successfully ‘steal’ your invention from yourself, you must also study patented inventions that are similar to yours. Because when you fully understand what’s been done before, you can hone in on your point of difference — which is also an excellent selling tool. (More on that later.) The knowledge you gain from studying the prior art will help you think about additional variations of your invention.
In the end, the intellectual property you file will be so much stronger — and thus valuable — as a result.
This strategy has worked well for me. When I came up with an innovation that added more space to labels, I figured there would be copycats if it took off. So I began envisioning as many variations as possible, including manufacturing processes, materials and uses, and patenting those. Ultimately, that’s how I got my licensee to license the technology from me instead of working around me.
I ended up in federal court because someone had found a workaround… or so they thought. We settled two weeks before trial.
I relied on the same strategy when the company I later sold that patent portfolio to hired me to develop and expand the technology. At the time, 13 patents had already been issued on it.
What more could possibly be filed? I couldn’t do it, I told them. They disagreed, and patiently encouraged me to take my time examining the claims that had been issued through a different lens.
And guess what? They were right. I had to start inventing again. Eventually, I was able to get seven more patents on, you guessed it: That same technology.
There’s always a way. And if you don’t figure out what that is first, someone will capitalize on the opportunity you’ve left on the table.
Consider visiting manufacturing facilities to stimulate your thinking. One of the best ways of protecting your invention is by knowing how to manufacture it faster and cheaper than anyone else. To that end, stay current. Where is the industry headed? How does the newest technology work? Make decisions based not only on the present. It doesn’t hurt to stay abreast of what your competitors are up to either. You can do so in part by reading their patent applications.
On the other hand, if your product is composed of a particularly unique material and/or manufacturing method, that can also be a form of protection. That’s what Marissa Louie, creator and CEO of the hit plush toy line Animoodles, attributed in part to her success.
“We luckily have not had to deal with copycats so far,” she revealed in a phone interview. “It’s not easy to make an Animoodle. We spent years engineering them, and they’re expensive to produce because we work with factories that specialize in the highest end plush.”
Use your ingenuity to stay one step ahead. Passion is on your side.
For more of my strategies on how to use intellectual property to profit, check out my latest book, Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent.