At present, it could be considered that we are in a world full of high-competitive businesses in which entrepreneurs put all their efforts on finding solutions to maintain their market-share or increase business profitability.
One of the solutions is using a patent protection as a patent provides an owner with exclusive right in manufacturing, selling, licensing, distributing, or importing invention in the country that the patent protection covers.
Here are 4 basic ways for the entrepreneurs and beginners that could be applied with their business strategy to decrease infringement risk:
- Conducting a freedom to operate (FTO) analysis before manufacturing, selling or importing products.
If a plan to manufacture or import a product has been made, we recommend conducting a freedom to operate analysis in advance. The freedom to operate analysis is a method to find out if the plan-to-launch product is protected legally by intellectual property already. In addition, it also provides the current status on the intellectual property which means if the inventions are no longer under protection of intellectual property, the entrepreneurs would have a less chance to face the infringement.
- Filing a patent application before publishing or launching products
Most appropriate way to decrease the infringement risk is filing a patent application before publishing or launching a product as one of the patentability criteria is “Novelty” which means the product or invention must not be disclosed before the filing of the patent application. However, when attending the exhibition held by the government, if no patent application has been filed before and the disclosure of the product or invention is required, the product owner will be able to file a patent application within the limited timeframe which is 12 months from the date of the exhibition.
- Filing a patent application when obtaining new ideas or products from research and development activity.
Before researching and developing any new products, it is recommended to find out if there are any patent applications that provide protection for the same matter of your product ideas. In case, there is no identical patent application or invention, filing a patent application for a protection of your product ideas is necessary. However, before filing a patent application, it is advisable to check if your product ideas have obvious distinctness and provide a non-obvious technical solution in order to meet with the patentability criteria.
- Licensing patent to develop, manufacture or sell products.
Currently, there are more than million patents in the world that entrepreneurs could license. This would help reduce wasting time in research and development activity. After license, the entrepreneurs can commercialize the licensed patent without infringing patents. To reach licensable patents, the entrepreneurs could visit both international and national patent databases.
As listed above, the entrepreneurs or business beginner could apply them with their own business plan and commercialization strategy. As each one has different advantages, it is recommended to find a consultant in order to obtain the most appropriate way.
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