Intellectual Property Protection for Entrepreneurs
By Harish Keshwani at 5 September, 2005, 1:26 am
Intellectual Property or IP protection is important and critical for an Entrepreneur. Some of the situations faced, options available and decisions to be taken can become a big headache for Entrepreneurs.
An entrepreneur is generally advised to be secretive about the idea, hire a patent attorney, get non-disclosure agreements (NDA) signed, get documented idea notarized, check online on The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) if a similar idea exists and finally explore the possibility of filing a provisional patent application.
Most of the advices are well given and must be considered, but some of these advices may not be practical to follow. Consider a situation, where an entrepreneur needs to include his/her idea in a business plan in order to make a presentation to the Venture Capitalist. It may be far fetched to expect a Venture Capitalist to sign a NDA. I had asked this question during one of the sessions, in SBIR conference held in Omaha, to a Venture Capital facilitator. His answer was more on these lines “I am a Venture Capitalist. You have to trust me. I get scores of idea every day, Do you think I will sign NDAs all day long?”
IP laws are complicated and not easy to understand. An Entrepreneur’s tendency is to do-it-all-yourself. However IP protection is one area that must be handled by a professional patent attorney. This is an expensive proposition but money is well spent if protecting your idea is of prime importance.
The biggest issue with patents, especially software related, is the situation where the competitor modifies few areas of the software and uses the idea as his own. This can happen in other areas too, but it is more prominent in software areas.
Although provisional patent applications has its advantages of lower application fees and one year “cooling” period, it has a disadvantage of being “held-up” for a period of one year before a more formal, full patent application.
Check out what an attorney and inventor, Daniel E. Tedesco, Esq. has to say in his article…
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