Episode 7 - PATENTS & STRATEGY (a necessary evil) part 1

Why didn't you bring up patents earlier?

That is because they are a necessary evil, and along with patents comes lawyers and a higher cost to your product.

This episode just scratches the surface of patents but makes it clear that a strategy needs to be in place before the first call to a lawyer.

Contact: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:16):
So tell me if you've heard thisone before. I want to be on
TV. I want to be famous. I want to be a millionaire.
On all those TV shows, allthey do is talk about ideas and patents.
I mean, seriously, I gotgood ideas. Come on, Jack,
it just can't be that difficult tobe given a pattern. What's the

(00:37):
trick? No trick, hopeful inventors. That's why patents are awarded, not
given, and they're not that easyto come by. I might add,
Hi, everybody, welcome back tothe thirty year Overnight Sensation. I'm your
host, Jack Courage, and thispodcast is a conversation, not a class.

(01:02):
That's what I used to do inclass. If you're a novice inventor
or want to be an inventor,I'll take you through the trials of designing,
manufacturing, selling, and getting yourproduct into the market. This podcast
is not a front for a productdevelopment firm or some company trying to generate
money off of your ideas. It'sabout the trials of inventing and it's not

(01:25):
easy, but you can do ityourself. If I can do it,
no formal training. You can doit. You just have to be smart
about it. So most people listeningknow what Pandora's Box was and is a
metaphor in the form of a Greekfable. Once Pandora opened the box,
actually it was a jar, butnobody says that anymore. Everything that was

(01:49):
terrible in the world came out sickness, disease, famine, lawyers. But
the last item out of the boxwas at saving grace, and it was
hope. But if you've been around, as Red said, hope can be
a dangerous thing. So I gotto kind of keep that in mind.

(02:10):
So where are we in my story. I had a chance to make a
product for a big company. Ihomed in on an idea. I had
the prototype completed, I filed forthe patent, and at this point the
first runs of the product were happening, and my friends talk about opening Pandora's
Box. I'm sure I'm not theonly one ever to put the evils of

(02:34):
Pandora's Box equal to dealing with lawyersand getting a patent. But to keep
that image alive, lawyers and patentsare necessary evil. You may be wondering,
Jack, why did you wait solong to talk about lawyers and patents
in your podcast? Shouldn't have beenthe first thing we talked about. Listen,

(02:55):
if I could think of lawyers andpatents last, I would. But
you need to consider lawyers and patentsearly on, but not deal with them
until the last possible chance. Andin my experience, most of them did
come from Pandora's box. Once again, I have been supremely blessed now that

(03:17):
is, but after years of trialand error, my present lawyer is truly
great. And I wish the legalprofession was full of guys like Bruce,
but they are not. Lawyers costmoney, a lot of money, and
when you're starting up you need everydollar for the product and then the testing.

(03:38):
But once you get past the testingand are making the final prototype,
you may, and I said may, like all caps may need a lawyer.
You have to decide what you wantto do and how do you want
to be protected. I could havefive lawyers right next to me right now,
ask them the same base question,and you would get five different answers.

(04:00):
It's a kin to get in yourtaxes done. There are certain base
rules you need to follow, butthen there's always some ambiguity, and that
is what drives people mental. Itdrives me mental. The ambiguity and the
uncertainty, the what if I thoughtthat was the rule? Non, Well
it is, but it's kind ofnot. And then it only depends on

(04:25):
what the examiner thinks anyway, Sowe try to stick with that, but
it couldnot be right. That's thekind of stuff I'm talking about. But
even more important than that, whatis it? Exactly? Are you going
to use the patent for? Oneof my most successful products I developed and
sold never had any patent protection,mainly because it would have been very,

(04:47):
very expensive and I would have hada very limited scope of protection and to
non lawyers that means narrow and veryspecific protection. To me, it just
never was going to be worth it. I just had to get the product
out fast and get it everywhere asfast as possible. This is where what

(05:08):
are you going to use the patentfor? Really comes into play now.
Just to be a bigger pisser,keep in mind, no matter how much
you are protecting your product, ifit's successful, someone will steal or the
polite term is infringe on your design. No matter what you do. It
sucks and I try not to bebitter, but maybe you can tell on

(05:31):
a little bitter and as you canprobably tell I don't like that. After
all these years of people stealing.By the way, like I said,
lawyers say infringing. It sounds morepolite. It's still the same damn thing.
I still get pissed off about it. Companies jump on your bandwagon after
you've made the design popular. Itstill burns me to a crisp. But

(05:54):
it happens. I'm not saying tolike it. I'm just saying it happens.
The best thing you can do isget out in front of it.
Now if you go to the bigroute, say a Target or a Walmart.
And I do think this is kindof important. Most times, you
need to do your best to makeas much publicity as possible so that you

(06:15):
can own that wave. It's yours, it's your product, it's your wave.
While there's will later pilfer your idea, but you still own the wave
that you created. Let me say, on the web and in the land
of podcasts, there are many manypodcasts about patents. But when I listen
to them now, within a fewminutes, I'm ready to twist off my

(06:39):
ears and poke out my eyes.To me, it's just boring. But
when you're starting out, it paysto listen and read up on patents.
After your first few patents, youget the general idea, and then you
let your lawyers take it from there. And then I mentioned that that's expensive
too. It's always expensive with lawyers. For my head covering project, I

(07:03):
knew if I were to have atrue idea, I would not only need
to protect my investors, but Iwould also be trying to corner a very
small portion of what I thought wasan unseen market that could be worth multi
millions. So, since I didn'tknow how big this was truly going to
get, and I thought it hadthe potential for not just not only national

(07:27):
but also international possibilities, I tooka very cautious approach that I thought I
could scale up to protect the bigidea. I looked for protection incrementally,
which is always more painful than justthrowing down a bunch of cash and saying
give me all the protection I canget, which, if you got the
money, that's great, but it'sreally rare. Part of the reason for

(07:53):
this podcast was the hindsight. Bythe time you hear this, I've already
made the mistakes I was going tomake on this product. I didn't start
this podcast until my product was completed, so and I would have an accurate
detail of what happened, so thatif you were listening to it, you'd
get the real idea what a persongoes through and hopefully learn from it.

(08:16):
The minute I had an acceptable design, I filed for design patent now unless
next parts a tongue twister. Asthe product grew, I continued to seek
protection, then on other patents thatgrew out of the original patent. Then
I spent time trying to get morepatents off of that, as well as

(08:37):
international patents. Remember when you starestep patents, time constraints are added and
you need to have money for that, and it's tough. Also, I
know most lawyers just flipped out onthat, but the reason that they're flipping
is because that thought is, hey, just put down a big bunch of
money and cover yourself all and youknow the future, which nobody knows the

(09:01):
future, and you don't know howthings evolve. Now. At the time,
I thought I was right, butI was also gambling with other people's
money, so I needed to beas sure as I could be, so
I did do it incrementally. Therewere many other things to file also,
copyrights, trademarks, it goes onand on. But all this is for

(09:22):
one thing. Protection And with theindustry players I was going to encounter,
I would need every bit of protectionI could afford. So, Jack,
what's a big takeaway for us inall these patents? You've described a few
ways, but I still don't know. Well, that's why this is a
two parter. I think it isincredibly stupid. Yes, I use the

(09:43):
word stupid. People get mad whenyou say stupid. It's stupid and costly
to even consider a patent without havinga strategy. First, I don't mean
a patent strategy. I mean aproduct strategy. Most people just say,
hey, get a patent, you'llbe saved. You can sue him.

(10:05):
Well, you can do that,but it takes years, and it won't
help your sales now, and usuallyit will cost a lot more money.
Always just costs more or and it'sa big ore here. You can be
really smart, have a good productstrategy where the patent protection is just one

(10:26):
of the protections that you have.And we'll talk about that in the next
part, in part two. Sountil next time, when you're thinking of
ideas, never settle, and whenyou're struggling, I mean really struggling.
Just stay the course. Keep inmind that's when most people give up and
quit, and you don't have toquit. There's always another way. I'm

(10:50):
your host, Jack Courage the thirtyyear Overnight Sensation. Stay at it.