Top 3 mistakes in protecting your intellectual property

I've been in the patent business for quite a few years. People ask whether it's boring. It really isn't. Every day I get to talk to creative people who are full of enthusiasm about their invention, and building a protection strategy with them is a genuine pleasure.

Sometimes, though, I have to disappoint people. Protecting an idea comes with rules not everyone knows about. That's understandable, but missing out on a patent because of it is painful.

So here are my top three patent blunders, all of them cases I've seen myself. Hopefully they'll stop you making the same mistakes.

Blunder 1: the trade fair

I remember it like yesterday. A well-known SME had shown its latest invention at a trade fair. The response was great. Someone even asked whether they'd patented it. They hadn't, but they'd sort that out the very next day.

When they sat down with me, I had to tell them a patent was no longer possible in many countries, including the Netherlands. Novelty is one of the requirements, and by showing the invention publicly they'd made it known. It was no longer novel.

Differences in patent law

The rules vary by country, which was lucky here. In Germany and the US, disclosing your own innovation doesn't immediately count against you. Both have a grace period of six months to a year, so we filed there straight away.

The company ended up benefiting a lot from its German and American patents. But it would much rather have had the others too.

Blunder 2: you get what you pay for

This one worked out, but more by luck than judgement.

A man came to my office. He'd paid an unnamed party €300 to draft a patent application, which is very cheap indeed. He wanted to extend it to other countries, and when that party couldn't help, he came to EP&C.

Reading the application, I was shocked. His invention wasn't described in the text at all. The application wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

A blessing in disguise

Because the invention wasn't described in the application and he hadn't disclosed it anywhere else, we could start again from scratch. He ended up with a solid patent that still earns him money today.

Blunder 3: an invalid patent

A client was approached by an American company offering exclusive European licensing rights to an innovative office product. American and European patent applications had been filed, and my client would get exclusive rights to sell it in Europe. They liked the idea.

They'd read the application themselves and thought it looked fine. Sensibly, they asked me to check the patent family anyway.

The applications themselves were sound. But they weren't valid in Europe, because of a mistake in how priority had been invoked from the American application. Europe's rules differ slightly from America's.

My client had a narrow escape. They still took the licence, but at a much lower price.