Tag: new product

  • Protect Your Products with Patent

    Protect Your Products with Patent

    While there’s innovative product like iPhone, most new products are improved versions of old products.

    Patent protects both.

    It really doesn’t matter whether your invention makes people’s lives better or not.

    For example, there is a famous case of a “fake juice dispenser”. The dispenser by its appearance has a tank that contains liquid juice. But inside, the dispenser has a water tank and a juice powder container as well as a mixing mechanism, all hidden from the plain view. The design enables the juice seller to use powdered juice concentrate that has a longer shelf life while appealing to customers who like the freshness of liquid juice.

    Long story short, the dispenser got patent protection.

    Patent is often the only way to curb competition.

    Patent is a strong legal right. It grants you government-sanctioned monopoly, though for a limited time, over a thing or a way to do something. And moreover it can raise a high bar blocking others from encroaching on your market.

    Let’s say you invented a method in which you make a sandwich while wearing a thimble, and this way, you can make your sandwich miraculously delicious.

    Now, if there is no known method or record in which you make a sandwich using a thimble, you can probably get that method patented. I know it’s far-fetched; someone probably made a sandwich or two while wearing a thimble in the past. Nonetheless, if nobody did, this invention is quite innovative, right? It’s certainly not an improvement of traditional sandwich recipes.

    Now, for 20 years, nobody can make sandwich with a thimble without your permission. How does this work in a real life? Well, as soon as people learn about this (getting a patent means your method is no longer a secret), they will start making sandwiches with a thimble at home, and there is no way you can monitor everyone’s kitchen to enforce your right. Nonetheless, if it’s a sandwich shop, you can probably do something about it. And more importantly, you will have monopoly on thimbles for sandwich-making because anyone who markets a thimble for sandwich-making will indirectly infringe your patent.

    Then, competitors will try to design around your method. If the thimbles work because of certain physical attributes, there could be other ways to achieve similar effect. That involves reverse-engineering and some research effort. After all, they might come up with a better way.

    To prevent this, you want to keep inventing or improving your method. By keep inventing, I mean you should try to patent new ways to make sandwiches. On the other hand, if there is improvement, you should consider patenting the improvement as well. When you have so many ways to make sandwiches patented, then your competitors will feel like it’s easier to just pay you licensing fees or just leave the market. Improvement on your old invention makes other alternatives less efficient and thus less appealing.

    Two lessons from the above hypothetical.

    1. Your invention needs not be new. A thimble? I definitely remember seeing my grandma using it. There’s always a way to patent (and thus protect) your thing.
    2. You need to keep inventing or improving. Stay forward-looking. Unless you keep working on it, others will find a way to circumvent it.
  • 3 Questions Before Launching a New Product

    3 Questions Before Launching a New Product

    “Everyone copies!”

    There is often a grey area between innovation and imitation when it comes to a highly competitive industry. Nevertheless, you often hear about patent infringement lawsuits and trademark disputes.

    Especially in the U.S., lawsuits and other legal disputes are a serious problem for business owners. If you once get served with a complaint, you cannot simply ignore it because your failure to respond will result in default judgment against you. And attorney’s fees that easily go around a thousand of dollars an hour will make you dizzy. As it happens, most accused companies end up settling rather than challenging the allegation of wrongdoing.

    There goes potential unfairness. As to intellectual property lawsuits, many business owners lack relevant experience and knowledge, so there are cases where an accuser wields a bogus patent or trademark to threaten a business in bad faith. There are reports of entities that strategically acquire a failing or bankrupt company, obtain its intellectual property rights, and sue a bunch of other companies in the same field to score settlements with a sheer threat of lawsuits.

    Of course, not every claim is without merit. Sometimes, you can unknowingly infringe other people’s right. Occasionally, you have to push forward to make profit despite a possible lawsuit that ensues. Nevertheless, it is important to fully evaluate the seriousness of the outcome.

    Well, you can possibly avoid a serious problem with a tad bit of caution. You first ought to know what are protected under the intellectual property law.

    Simply put, patent protects “idea”, copyright “expression”, and trademark “goodwill”.

    1. Patent

    We are talking about utility patent here, which is commonly known as patent. It protects an invention, which is to say protecting “a new idea that did not exist before”. Not all new idea is protected because doing so would seriously deter a free competition in the market. Therefore, a grant of patent happened only after a set of strict requirements is met, the toughest among which is that the idea should be “not obvious”.

    In other words, an idea that is within an ordinary practice of a person who is skilled in the field is not considered a patentable idea. Consequently, a simple combination of parts that already exist or a straightforward application of known principle will not produce a patent. For example, making of a hybrid automobile, which involves simply adding an electrical motor to an automobile, would not deserve the protection of patent law.

    Now the question to ask yourself as to patent law is if your new product is based on ” an ordinary practice” or “a step ahead it”.

    2. Copyright

    As mentioned above, copyright protects “expression”. Here, expression implies that it can be recorded in writings, pictures, sounds, or videos. Only such things that can be recorded, i.e. expressions, can be protected under the copyright law.

    To illustrate, let’s say a company achieved a great success by using a picture of a cat on their product label. Another company can simply copy the idea of a cat label without infringing any copyrights if the company uses a different picture of a cat. The idea of using a cat picture in packaging should be protected by applying for a patent. (Of course, there is nothing new about the idea of using a cat picture in marketing, so a patent grant is unlikely. Instead, you should rely on the trademark law.)

    Copyright disputes can occur with regard to phrases used in marketing. Normally, short and common combination of ordinary words are not protected by copyright, but if you copy an entire phrase of another’s headlines in the promotional materials, there can be a problem. To avoid copyright disputes, you can paraphrase. For example, a catchphrase, “what you must bring to your second marriage”, may be protected by the copyright law, but you can simply use a different phrase with a similar meaning such as “you should bring this if you ever marry again”.

    Now the question you must ask yourself is “if there’s a virtually identical expression”.

    3. Trademark

    The last one is trademark. In fact, the above hypothetical case of a cat printed product has a trademark issue. If a company starts to use a cat on its product label and consumers starts to associate a cat label with the company, then it can be said there is a goodwill attached to the use of cat on label. That is, consumers start to prefer a product with a photo of a cat on the product because of past experience. As such, you cannot avoid the trademark infringement even if you use a different photo of a different cat photographed by a different person.

    To consumers, it’s all the same cat label. And in this case, the cat photo is a trademark. So, you need to remember that not just brand names or logos are trademarks. There is a caveat in trademark protection. The existence of goodwill is very subjective and hard to prove. Therefore, it is a common business practice to register a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

    Now, the question to ask yourself is if “your brand name/logo is registered with the USPTO”.