If your business is built on a truly original idea, one of the first steps you need to take is to get a legal protection of that idea.

You need to consider the protection of your intellectual property early in the formation of the business. It is heartbreaking to find that the idea you’ve worked so hard to conceptualize and develop is stolen by other people and companies. You end up losing your product, and most importantly, your profits as well! Plus, failure to protect your proprietary information could lead to complex and expensive legal actions later on.

The best course of action is to visit your country’s patent and trademark office. In the U.S., patent grant provides “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the United States or “importing” the invention into the United States.

Before you can patent an idea or a product, it must meet various tests. First, only the concrete embodiment of an invention or an idea is patentable. You must build a working model and test it in the environment in which it is supposed to work. Second, you must be the first to conceive the idea, and it must be different from what already exists. The idea must not have been described in a printed publication elsewhere.

The process of patenting your invention takes time and money. At present, the average patent application takes about 24.6 months. The patent usually lasts for 20 years for utility and plant patents; and 14 years for design patents.

The costs can range between $1,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of your idea. While expensive, you will find that aggressively pursuing patents is an integral long-term strategy that pays off.

Read full article by Steve Ma. Reyna