I don't consider myself very smart or successful, but I have been around many successful business people. I travel overseas very often and when I stay at 5 star Western hotels I meet a lot of people. When you are overseas as much as these people are, you just want to talk to anyone that speaks English. I have talked to many CEOs, founders/inventors, investors, factory owners, millionaires, and even a billionaire. This is what I have learned.
When I ask them if they used business plans, patents, financial projections, legal and tax structures when they first started, they all would just laugh. They all shook their heads and said no. Their focus was on products and services, marketing, relationships, and building a BRAND. They went out there and pounded the pavement. They did whatever they needed to do to make their idea work. They allocated their funds and energy into key areas of their businesses. They told me that they had no time to even bother with all the other stuff like business plans, patents, etc. They didn't worry about that stuff until down the line, when they had the money to pay people to worry about it. These people were driven by a passion to make things happen, and spend very little time being distracted by plans, patents, projections, etc. Getting a business started is hard enough to even begin to worry about all that other stuff.
If the patent is for something small or you don't really have the financial resources, a patent is pretty much useless. But I'm sure some patent attorneys are more than happy to take your money to file it and defend it. It's not a easy process and defending it is even harder. Infomercial companies and attorneys make millions of dollars convincing inventors that they need a patent. All it does is lines their pocket books.
A patent is only as good as your financial ability to defend it. It is extremely expensive to defend. No one is going help you defend it but yourself.
If you are small and financially limited, a patent is no more than a hollow threat, a poker bluff. The best you can probably hope for is to pay your lawyer to send a cease and desist letter on attorney letterhead to the infringing party and hope he stops infringing your patent. But if calls your bluff, there isn't much you can do unless you have the money to back it up. And if your idea is really that great and people stand to make a lot of money from it, they WILL call your bluff. They will make you work for it and see is you have the money to protect it. If the infringing company is a small business, do you have the tens of thousands of dollars to take them to court? If the company is a large company, do you have millions of dollars to fight them in court?
Unless you have a killer idea, which you stand to make millions from, I would not even bother with a patent. But then again, every inventor thinks s/he has a killer idea worth a patent.
My advice to you is to spend your energy and focus on building the core and foundation of your business instead. Focus on the product or service, focus on marketing, focus on business structure, focus on R &D, etc. Just not patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc. Once you build up your company or idea, then go get a legal team to back it up.
Your focus should be about building a BRAND first. Every great idea has copy cats and someone will ALWAYS find a way to make it better and cheaper. But if you get in the game early and build a BRAND around your product or service, then you really don't need a patent. (you might need a trademark though :wink: ). A BRAND is something that your competitor can never take away from you. A BRAND can be a number of things. It could be great customer service, it could be high quality products, great marketing, etc. You just have to find a way to build customer loyalty and let that be the driving force of your company.
Unless you are large company, which I doubt you are since your asking for help on an auto forum, don't even bother with a patent.
I certainly don't claim to know anything about business and patents, I am only passing on the information that I get when I talk to these successful business people. I am only starting to put some of these lesson to practice.
I hope this helps. Good Luck.
