Do I really need a patent is it worth the investment ?
patentinindia....
we will discuss some of the important things you need to consider when deciding whether to invest in filing a patent for your invention or not.
“What if you don’t go for a patent protection and in-stade use that money somewhere else (building or growing my business)?”
Fair questions and the main motive behind these questions is that you want to know if you will be getting the return on the investment (ROI)? for the cost that you are considering for patenting your invention.
Now, to answer this in the simplest possible way, we will take an example.
What if you do not patent your invention
Let’s imagine a scenario; you are a business owner or a professional and you are continuously being challenged with different problems in your business on a daily basis
invention in US
While doing that you happened to come up with an innovative solution for your business. The solution has a commercial value in the market.
innovative solution to problem
Let’s go fast forward and your company is successful !!! because you have implemented that solution in your business and you are enjoying success in the market due to that solution.
And then, the competitors will jump in and they are there to compete. and they will be trying to take as much market share as possible for your solution.
competitors
How they can compete? Your competitors will take your product or your innovative solution, reverse engineer it and then they will:
try to beat you on prices
will try to beat you on quality may be selling a low-quality product at a cheaper price and
they probably will try to beat you on large scale production
Competitors would do whatever things possible for them to compete and capture your market share.
Even a small competitor companies would be able to produce similar products and sell them at much lower prices since they do not have to consider the R and D cost in the equation.
Furthermore, your opportunity to license or sell your innovative solution ( i.e. invention) is lost since you have not protected it by filing a patent.
and; a competitor firm may come up with a similar invention to which they might file a Patent, and then you will have to take permission from them (i.e. patent owner) to use the invention or you need to pay license fees for using the pat ented invention…
And ultimately even though you are the inventor/creator of that solution; you are the person who first made that innovative idea and worked on it and bring that solution to life, still you end up on the losing side.
And it’s not at all a typical case, it happens more often than not. We see this happening to businesses around us quite frequently. All the competitive advantage and potential of making significant profits with your innovative idea goes waste. And you don’t have any option but to give in to the ever-growing competition and lose.
What if you do patent your invention
Compare this situation with another situation, where you have filed a patent application for your invention and you got a patent granted for it.
Now the situation is different, the competition cannot directly compete with you as patent gives you exclusive rights. “the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, importing or offering for sale your patented invention without your permission”
In this case, you yourself can calculate the return on investment for your invention; If you can
build a business around it,
raise funding for the patented invention or
license it to other businesses or
sell the patented invention altogether.
There would be a very high potential of profits with your investment when you patent for your invention, provided your invention has commercial potential and you as an inventor or the owner of the invention has the ability and skills required to commercialize the patented invention, and in-process make significant money for your research and development efforts.