Hey there geeks, today I’m bringing you Alexander Polyansky, he’s an expert on copyright protection and intellectual property and the founder of Seventh.AI, a startup aiming to democratize idea ownership and patenting with the power of A.I.
Alex has spent a decade as a patent examiner with the USPTO in chemical arts and advanced materials, and has worked with numerous founders, researchers and students over the course of the past seven years guiding them on all matters of IP.
A serial entrepreneur and founder himself, he intimately understands the nuances of working with founders and startups, so to have him helping us navigate the complexities of IP in a way that founders can appreciate and connect to is nice.
Alex will be talking to us on the questions you asked on Parrity’s Telegram and helping us understand what one should be miding when dealing with IP for his startup / project.
Here we go, first question and probably a good point to start,
1. “Does it really make sense to invest in a patent? In what case? Is the general usage of patents more common in the USA, I mean how are you going to stop someone from China in copying your entire platform even when you have one like with Google and China hackers”
It’s good to hear that some of you tend to think of patenting as an investment, but more times than not this whole “patenting thing” is widely misunderstood. If you want to make an investment, you should expect a return. The best way to think about it is as follows:
Are you taking a product to market? If you do not protect it, anyone can steal it. And, no large company would buy you unless you have an IP-defensible product (thru patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets).
Are you raising funds? Investors won’t sign NDAs and some (you wouldn’t know who) might ‘borrow’ your idea and share it with a better team or company (or at least one the investor perceived to be better, which is all it takes).
Are you forming a relationship/partnership with a corporate partner? They might decide they can make/build/reverse engineer the product themselves, and they will. Even the most innovative companies like Amazon and Apple are constantly fishing for new ideas from entrepreneurs. Without a filed patent, you are finished.
For venture companies, it is mostly about raising money. IP Due Diligence can be a nasty process and it’s better to be ready for it with all your IP artifacts early than wait for an investor to turn you down. You only get one shot with investors.
Another reason, people come and go at companies all the time, so who owns that IP? What about if you hire a key contractor? What about when founders or senior management leave? Who owns their IP? Founder disputes over who owns what happens all the time and investors do not invest in companies with glaring founder issues and those that do not pass IP due diligence.
Key takeaways:
Savvy business owners monetize their work through products and licenses. It might be different for everyone, but mostly it depends where your customers are. For example, if I were selling a novel product on Amazon, I would definitely get a patent in the US for it and anywhere else my product is selling.
You are more likely to get acquired by a bigger company whether it is in Europe or the US, in which case US patents would provide you with a huge huge huge… advantage.
As to the China problem, first, in similar situations business owners had also filed in China to get a patent in China which affords protection in China. Businesses would do that so they could assert infringement in China and take infringers to court enforcing a Chinese patent. Asserting and defending your IP in any jurisdiction whether it is China or the US can be difficult and expensive and no one can predict the outcome with certainty. But I can predict with absolute certainty that you will lose every time if you do not file for patent protection in the first place.
This leads us to the final point, as to the actual enforcement issue, a patent takes some time in prosecution through the respective patent office. While it is in prosecution in the US, it is not enforceable in the US. But, you can still monetize on it by licensing to a competitor or by selling your company.
2. If I have a brilliant tech idea, what is the best time to get patented? On the concept stage or the prototype stage? How does that work?
If you have a brilliant idea, draw it out, describe in as much detail (using Seventh’s platform) as possible and submit. There is no better time to do it then early. No matter how brilliant your idea is, it will inevitably and absolutely change to some degree, because an idea is useless without execution and customers are not always keen to pay for something that does not exactly solve a problem. Once you figure out what they pay for, you file again, and then again. This is how companies build portfolios. And by the way, only with Seventh can you replicate what lawyers do at companies.
3. “When you put Copyright @Company 2020 for example, what does that actually protect / how much does it actually protect your app, idea/code, etc.”
A copyright (whether you place it on the page or not) protects your entire ‘creative’ work. It’s on you to enforce infringement thereof. If and when others have actually brought legal action against an infringer, typically the enforcer would have to consider the geography they are in, e.g. if the enforcer is in Guatemala and the infringer is in the US, there may be no remedy for it. In the US, owners of the copyright may want to register the copyright with USCO for example, and they would send them a notice with a letter “cease and desist.”
There are a few other things to consider as well:
Fair Use Rule,
Boundaries
Enforcement
Licensing Permissions
4. “How do companies like Google/FB/TW prevent and enforce copyright on their own platforms?
For example YouTube scrubs every video for copyright infringement before it lets you post content on its page. Otherwise, the owner of the copyright would have to scrub the internet themselves.
5. What are the go-to tools one can use to make his life easier when dealing with IP?
Of course I am going to promote my company here again: Seventh AI first because this is exactly what we do, we are founders ourselves building simple IP tools for other founders and at founder pricing. Seventh is a Saas for patents and trade secrets. We can also do Trademarks and help you with Copyright issues.
There you go, those are some interesting things to think about if you ever decide that pursuing patents is something that you need to do, and as it turns out it is.
Interested in learning more about IP and Copyright? Follow Alex on Parrity.com — The free and open learning platform that allows you to learn from the most successful business people and brands on the planet.
Got more questions for Alex? Join our Telegram channel and let us know what you want to know.
Thanks for reading,
Lubo
