Hello everyone,

I've been wondering, is it always worth to patent our work. To my knowledge, we have to pay lot of money to patent a project. But some projects don't find their way to application for several years. So, my point is, if a project isn't really lucrative, it's not worth it to patent it.
What do you think ?

 

Google "Case against patents" Don Lancaster"

 

Depends who you are. If you're just a guy trying to make money to feed your family, no don't patent. Patent does not prevent people copying your work; it only allows you to sue someone in court if they copy your work. If you can't afford to out-lawyer the likes of General Motors or Exxon Mobil, then there's not really anything gained by having a patent. Plus, once you patent, your design is out there for everyone to copy. If you don't patent, then they have to reverse engineer it ( or maybe they don't even know about it, which is better.)

But if you work for a big company that can afford to defend your patent against other big companies, then sure, patent anything and everything. You never know, maybe someone else will need it and have to pay your company for it.

 

Hello everyone,

I've been wondering, is it always worth to patent our work. To my knowledge, we have to pay lot of money to patent a project. But some projects don't find their way to application for several years. So, my point is, if a project isn't really lucrative, it's not worth it to patent it.
What do you think ?

To add onto Strantor's statement that a patent only allows you to sue someone that infringes your patent, the converse is also not in your favor. Getting a patent doesn't necessarily allow you to practice your patent. If your patent is an improvement on some other patent, you must license the base technology patent (or wait for it to expire) if you want to practice your improved process.

 

I've been wondering, is it always worth to patent our work. To my knowledge, we have to pay lot of money to patent a project.

It doesn't have to cost a lot of money to file a patent. It's only about $600 in the U.S. The expensive part of the process is the review and study of prior art. You don't have to pay a lawyer to do that - you can do it yourself - and in fact you don't need to do it at all. (But when the patent office rejects your claims, you'll wish you had done a better job.)

It's a very rare patent that is "worth it" for the patent per se. I would guess maybe 1%. Patents have intangible benefits, though, such as signaling to competitors to stay off your turf, to advertise to customers, and to reward employees and promote their professional development.

 

For some of the items I developed and marketed, I was the designer, producer and seller, so not much overhead, and these items were for a limited market, so I figured that any large Co would not be bothered to sink money into R&D for something with limited return, so the bottom line is, Who is your market? If it is a World wide market with potential very large sales, then it may be worth the Patent approach.
Then of course the Chinese seem to poach designs with impunity!
Max.