One of the questions that comes up is where and how does the intellectual property process fit within the context of building a start-up. This is important because much of what we do in getting a start-up off the ground is to tell prospective customers about our ideas. Doing this at the wrong time and in the wrong way can damage your ability to patent your key technology. For simplicity we can think about the following five activities in a start-up company.

• Finding the pain
• Finding a solution
• Finding investors
• Development
• Selling the company

see: Intellectual Property, Patents, Patent Strategy

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Patents should be thought of as more of a strategic or economic asset rather than a legal one. Yes the legal process is used in the enforcement of a patent, but that is frequently a last resort.

see: Intellectual Property, Patent Process, IP in the start-up process

This discussion of strategic decisions that surround patents in a software business will address three ideas:

• Defensive publication
• What to patent
• Patent portfolios

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Patents are an important part of an intellectual property strategy. This post discusses the process of obtaining and defending a patent.There are other posts that discuss strategic uses of patents.

see: Intellectual Property,  Patent Strategy

This discussion of patents is based on U.S. law, which is similar in many respects to patent law in other countries. This is also meant as an overview to guide strategic thinking about patents. Consult a patent attorney for details.

A patent is the right to exclude others from using your ideas in exchange for public disclosure of those ideas. This right of exclusion is limited to 20 years after the filing for the patent. For a patent to be valid, it must be original and non-obvious. These two criteria are important and are the basis for obtaining and defending a patent. The original requirement is so that patents protect inventors. What society wants is to reward the creation of new knowledge. The invention must not only be original but non-obvious. The test is “obvious to someone reasonably skilled in the art.” For example, if you have a new web technology it must be non-obvious to other web programmers at the time you filed for the patent. The fact that it was non-obvious to web users does not matter because they are not skilled in the art of web programming. The time of filing also matters. If all web programmers understand your approach today, that does not matter. It is only obvious if most web programmers understood your approach at the time you filed for the patent.

Patenting process

This is somewhat of a simplification, but there are generally four steps to the patent process.

• Provisional application (optional)
• Full application
• Granting the patent
• Enforcement

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