10.8 Protecting Your Idea

You can protect your rights to your idea with a patentGrant of the exclusive right to produce or sell a product, process, or invention. from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which grants you “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the United States for twenty years.U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/howtopat.htm (accessed May 11, 2006).

What do you need to know about applying for a patent? For one thing, document your idea as soon as you think of it. Simply fill out a form, stating the purpose of your invention and the current date. Then sign it and get someone to witness it. The procedure sounds fairly informal, but you may need this document to strengthen your claim that you came up with the idea before someone else who also claims it. Later, you’ll apply formally for a patent by filling out an application (generally with the help of a lawyer), sending it to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and waiting. Nothing moves quickly through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and it takes a long time for any application to get through the process.

Will your application get through at all? There’s a good chance if your invention meets all the following criteria:

• It’s new. No one else can have known about it, used it, or written about it before you filed your patent application (so keep it to yourself until you’ve filed).
• It’s not obvious. It has to be sufficiently different from everything that’s been used for the purpose in the past (you can’t patent a new color for a cell phone).
• It has utility. It can’t be useless; it must have some value.

Applying for a U.S. patent is only the first step. If you plan to export your product outside the United States, you’ll need patent protection in each country in which you plan to do business, and as you’ve no doubt guessed, getting a foreign patent isn’t any easier than getting a U.S. patent. The process keeps lawyers busy: during a three-year period, PowerSki International had to take out more than eighty patents on the PowerSki Jetboard. It still has a long way to go to match the number of patents issued to some extremely large corporations. IBM, the world’s patent leader, received more than three thousand patents in 2002 alone.“International Property and Licensing” IBM, http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing (accessed May 11, 2006).

Clearly, the patent business is booming. Worldwide, there are more than four million patents in force, and seven hundred thousand applications are filed annually.“Facts and Figures from the World of Patents,” European Patent Office, http://www.european-patent-office.org/epo/facts_figures/facts2000/e/5_e.htm (accessed May 11, 2006). The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issues about ninety thousand patents a year—about one for every thirty-three thousand residents.U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip/index.htm (accessed May 11, 2006). One reason for the recent proliferation of patents is the high-tech boom: over the last decade, the number of patents granted has more than doubled.