By: Michael J. Kasdan
As any entrepreneur is well aware, the early stages of a new business venture are an incredibly busy time. Entrepreneurs must focus on building the core team, structuring the company, attracting investors, developing the product/service, and developing key partnerships, sales channels and marketing plans. These tasks are typically all-consuming for the founders, taxing both their financial and time resources.
During this time, it may be a challenge to simultaneously focus on intellectual property issues. However, this early time period is also a critical time for ensuring that a business takes steps to protect its core intellectual property and avoids the risk of third party intellectual property issues. Today, more than ever, having a solid understanding of intellectual property and developing an IP strategy that aligns with the business is a crucial part of building a new venture on a solid foundation.
This article includes an overview of the different types of intellectual property and provides advice to start-up companies on how to secure their own intellectual property as well as protect against intellectual property risks from others.
The three basic types of intellectual property that startups should understand are:
> Patents
> Trademarks
> Copyrights
Patents
Not every startup business will be best-served by investing its resources in building a patent portfolio, but the question of whether to pursue patent protection warrants a hard and early look. Knowledge of the role of patents is critical for two reasons:
> To protect your own business and inventions from your competitors
> To avoid the risk of being exposed to assertions of patent infringement by competitors and other third parties
It is important for startups to understand the different kinds of patent protection and how they fit into their business.
Utility patents can be obtained for processes, machines, articles of manufacture, or compositions of matter that are deemed new, useful and non-obvious. The traditional subject matter of such utility patents covers tangible, technical inventions, such as improvements to client-server systems, motors, radios, computer chips and various technical product features. For example, Boeing's US Patent No. 6,227,447 is a patent that covers methods of remotely controlling a vehicle. Patents can also be directed at new product features and functions. As another example, Facebook's US Patent No. 8,171,128, titled "Communicating a newsfeed of media content based on a member's interactions in a social network environment," protects its News Feed feature.
A separate category of patent, the design patent, may be sought to protect ornamental (non-functional) designs. Some examples of notable design patents include Apple's D 604,305 covering the design of its iPhone interface and Lululemon's design patent covering its yoga pants.
The role of patents
Although patents are the most expensive and time-consuming type of intellectual property to obtain, they also provide the best scope of protection. A patent provides its holder with the exclusive right to make, use or sell an invention. This means that it can exclude a competitor from making or selling the patented invention, irrespective of whether or not the competitor copied the invention or even previously knew of the patent. For this reason, a patent that covers an important feature that drives consumer demand and/or distinguishes one’s product or service from that of competitors, can be very valuable.
Read More >> https://www.natlawreview.com/article/what-start-ups-need-to-know-about-intellectual-property
