Preserving an idea on the open market.
Discussion
How would one go about doing this?
I have an idea that Im refining at the moment, it will be a success and save companies a lot of agro and money overnight and is not currently available, but we have had interest from people in the field to take it further.
However Im in the situation of wanting to stop another company coming in with large pockets and stealing the idea from under myself and my business partner.
Im not sure a Patent can cover it as it uses a lot of existing technology packaged together to create a new solution to an age old problem. Or is it the idea/final package that I can patent in the UK/EU?
Also UK/EU design rights I have seen being circumvented by even the smallest design change, making them useless as these small changes are seen as not an infringement on the original idea.
So how does one take an idea and go with it whilst trying to protect it at the same time these days?
I would also happily talk to investors under NDAs to try and get the big pockets, so as to not lose out, but as Im the ideas man, the actual creation of the finish product will involve electronics experts, which never of us are so would it make sense to find a engineer to come onboard under NDA too?
As you can guess I have not created an idea from scratch before, so Im uncertain on how to progress this and not to lose out to a Chinese copy or ruthless company with larger pockets than us.
I have an idea that Im refining at the moment, it will be a success and save companies a lot of agro and money overnight and is not currently available, but we have had interest from people in the field to take it further.
However Im in the situation of wanting to stop another company coming in with large pockets and stealing the idea from under myself and my business partner.
Im not sure a Patent can cover it as it uses a lot of existing technology packaged together to create a new solution to an age old problem. Or is it the idea/final package that I can patent in the UK/EU?
Also UK/EU design rights I have seen being circumvented by even the smallest design change, making them useless as these small changes are seen as not an infringement on the original idea.
So how does one take an idea and go with it whilst trying to protect it at the same time these days?
I would also happily talk to investors under NDAs to try and get the big pockets, so as to not lose out, but as Im the ideas man, the actual creation of the finish product will involve electronics experts, which never of us are so would it make sense to find a engineer to come onboard under NDA too?
As you can guess I have not created an idea from scratch before, so Im uncertain on how to progress this and not to lose out to a Chinese copy or ruthless company with larger pockets than us.
Patenting is horrifically expensive, to cover a decent part of the world ( UK, EU, US ) you're talking about £60-90k in fees. And then you've got no guarantee people will respect it.
At the end of the day I think you have to take your chances and hope to have enough of a first mover advantage to be ahead before rivals get around to copying you.
At the end of the day I think you have to take your chances and hope to have enough of a first mover advantage to be ahead before rivals get around to copying you.
Timmy40 said:
Patenting is horrifically expensive, to cover a decent part of the world ( UK, EU, US ) you're talking about £60-90k in fees. And then you've got no guarantee people will respect it.
At the end of the day I think you have to take your chances and hope to have enough of a first mover advantage to be ahead before rivals get around to copying you.
This is what I was hoping people would not say, as I was hoping other companies would not just copy it and then use their larger bank balances to wait until I have run out of money, gone bankrupt then just take the idea.At the end of the day I think you have to take your chances and hope to have enough of a first mover advantage to be ahead before rivals get around to copying you.
It will just mean that I need to wait and create the 4/5 different variations that we were going to release over the course of 18 months, then have them ready straight away so we can evolve quicker than the competition to get the market share.
On the + side being small you are quicker. Larger companies move slowly. And I realise you probably wouldn't want to sell, but often larger companies take the short cut and buy smaller companies with good ideas, Apple and Google both have track records for doing this, but it's not just in IT. It can make for a very lucrative exit point though!
On the whole, you make money through implementation, not ideas. Your business will succeed or fail based on how well you make your idea work for actual customers, not on how good or unique the idea is. Most larger companies don't sit around looking for other people's ideas to steal - they've got ideas of their own, customers to service and projects to complete before they can get on to what some one-man-band has done.
So, you've got six months or so before you're likely to get any competition, and when you do, they're unlikely to steal all of your customers away from you. If you're good as a business, you're likely to survive, if not it doesn't matter how secret your sauce is.
Don't think in terms of how clever your idea is. Think in terms of whether you can implement it fully, run a business based around it, contact enough potential customers, explain the benefit well enough to get them interested, make the actual sales and make enough money from each sale to turn a profit.
So, you've got six months or so before you're likely to get any competition, and when you do, they're unlikely to steal all of your customers away from you. If you're good as a business, you're likely to survive, if not it doesn't matter how secret your sauce is.
Don't think in terms of how clever your idea is. Think in terms of whether you can implement it fully, run a business based around it, contact enough potential customers, explain the benefit well enough to get them interested, make the actual sales and make enough money from each sale to turn a profit.
Tuna said:
On the whole, you make money through implementation, not ideas. Your business will succeed or fail based on how well you make your idea work for actual customers, not on how good or unique the idea is. Most larger companies don't sit around looking for other people's ideas to steal - they've got ideas of their own, customers to service and projects to complete before they can get on to what some one-man-band has done.
So, you've got six months or so before you're likely to get any competition, and when you do, they're unlikely to steal all of your customers away from you. If you're good as a business, you're likely to survive, if not it doesn't matter how secret your sauce is.
Don't think in terms of how clever your idea is. Think in terms of whether you can implement it fully, run a business based around it, contact enough potential customers, explain the benefit well enough to get them interested, make the actual sales and make enough money from each sale to turn a profit.
Good advice. A lot of SME's obsess over IP protection, it's understandable, but at the end of the day your secret will get out so you just have to get on with running a good business. So, you've got six months or so before you're likely to get any competition, and when you do, they're unlikely to steal all of your customers away from you. If you're good as a business, you're likely to survive, if not it doesn't matter how secret your sauce is.
Don't think in terms of how clever your idea is. Think in terms of whether you can implement it fully, run a business based around it, contact enough potential customers, explain the benefit well enough to get them interested, make the actual sales and make enough money from each sale to turn a profit.
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