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grynge

IP Protection

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by
grynge
, February 16th, 2012 at 12:23 AM (292 Views)
We have had a lot of talks about IP Protection, namely a patent, but Crabfoot, gave me a great idea rather than a Patent we can Register a Design.

Why not go the whole hog and register the patent, well I think the following reasons might suffice.

It is cheaper to register a design
It is much simpler to register a design
It will allow us (in countries where you can register the design) to place restraining orders (or their equivalent) on any companies trying to sell a similar design.
It may give us enough time (10 years) to make some money, the inventors are both in their 70's so they believe that is long enough.

Doing some other research it seems only the SAR's of China afford any IP Protection. Now after speaking to a few people, Thailand and Vietnam have been opened up as good destinations for manufacture. They both afford some IP Portection to registered companies and also have very low labour costs.

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  1. Chabrenas's Avatar
    Great news. Sounds as if things are really beginning to come together. So now you have to add Thailand and Vietnam to your itinerary...
  2. grynge's Avatar
    Thanks Chabrenas, luckily I have been to Thailand and have a friend that just about lives there as well as some knowledgable members of this forum. Personally I love Thailand and would have no problems travelling there to do business. So if it happens to fall that way I would love it Hopefully I will have more info for the next post.
  3. akirk's Avatar
    the disadvantage of a design over a patent is that it is specific versus a patent which can be generic - you patent a concept
    therefore a patent stops anyone else producing the same kind of product...
    a design only stops them producing the identical product...

    design registration only has any value at all where the design is essential to the value of the product (i.e. brand mainly) or in a very competitive design lead world - e.g. phones / tablets where you can't patent the concept but the design is important if you are Apple / Samsung...

    if your product is unique - then patent is the way to go in the UK you can register a patent free for the first 12 months (only cost is getting someone to write it if you are not confident yourself) - you can also pay the first year for the international patent which covers all treaty agreeing countries (100+) then after that you have to split out into each country separately though some like Europe you can get one patent for the area.

    If your product is unique - design registration will be useless as any big company can get around that and retain functionality with ease - unless the design is the USP of the product...

    Alasdair
  4. grynge's Avatar
    Some great info thanks Alasdair, in this case the design is the USP of the product, and I still think they are going to do a dump and run. Make as much as they can with as little outgoing as possible. They have a few other inventions which if this one makes a few dollars they might invest into those ideas. Again it is all very up in the air. I think because it's been so long in the pipeworks they just want to make a few dollars before someone else invents the same idea lol.
  5. Chabrenas's Avatar
    Good luck, grynge. Writing a proper patent application is a funny legalese thing. You start with the most general concept you have any hope of patenting, and then follow that with one or more successively restricted subsets of the concept in case the first isn't accepted. If you end up deciding to do it, I'll see if I can dig up one of my old (joint) patents to use as a crib sheet. Alasdair may know - can you submit something in more normal language for the 12 months' free protection?
  6. akirk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Chabrenas
    Good luck, grynge. Writing a proper patent application is a funny legalese thing. You start with the most general concept you have any hope of patenting, and then follow that with one or more successively restricted subsets of the concept in case the first isn't accepted. If you end up deciding to do it, I'll see if I can dig up one of my old (joint) patents to use as a crib sheet. Alasdair may know - can you submit something in more normal language for the 12 months' free protection?
    if all you want is 12 months protection you submit whatever you want
    but if you want long term protection and get the first bit wrong it can cause issues...

    Alasdair