What’s your patent strategy?
Most startup and mid-market CEOs are having a difficult time articulating their patent portfolio strategy, and an even harder time connecting a patent to their company’s value proposition.
The main reason for this phenomenon is that patents are typically associated with technology and NOT with business strategy. Why is that?
“The strength and vitality of the U.S. economy depends directly on effective mechanisms that protect new ideas and investments in innovation and creativity.” — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The USPTO exists to protect technological innovation and the investment in those innovations by providing copy protection patents for up to 20 years. But there lies a disconnect, as investment in innovations is part of business, but those patents are not intended to protect that.
The entire industry seems to buy into the idea that by protecting technology you can also protect business investments, only to realize late in the game that this DOES NOT deter your competition.
How does your patent strategy protect your business? Is it easy, hard or very difficult to circumvent?
If your patent can be circumvented, then it is not a question of if it will be circumvented, but when. When that happens, it will bring you little to no value as a result.
In order to create a patent that in fact protects your business, you must start from your value proposition (as opposed to the technology) and determine how to protect it.
Technology is only a means to an end, and the end is the value proposition.
Multi-Innovation strengthens businesses by shifting the focus from being mostly technology-centric to creating strategic inventions that protect the overall value proposition. Using rapid Strategy Development and Execution, Multi-Innovation creates a portfolio of patents that protects a business with its value proposition.
So begs the question: will you exponentially shift the value of your business by leveraging the power of having the right IP? Or, will you continue to reinvent the wheel?
