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Marketing
and licensing
Marketing your invention
Now that you've taken steps to protect your brainchild, you'll want to
decide the best way to market it and turn a profit. You have a number
of options including going into business yourself, licensing the invention
or selling your patent.
Setting up your own business allows you to retain full control of your invention, but means you assume all the risks.
With a licence, you grant one or more companies or individuals the right to manufacture and sell your invention in exchange for royalties. The licence can apply nationally or to only a specific geographic region. However, if you have not obtained protection in a certain country, your invention can be used freely by anyone there, even if you're protected elsewhere.
By selling your patent, you give up all rights as inventor, but you could gain an immediate lump sum of money without having to worry about whether the product is a commercial success.
It is important to keep your invention secret until your first patent application is filed, in order to preserve your rights to file later in most foreign countries.
Help
with marketing
The Patent Office cannot help you with marketing, but you can receive
assistance from other federal or provincial agencies.
Names of Canadian manufacturers who might be interested in a new invention are available from a number of sources, including the Canadian Trade Index, issued by the Canadian Manufacturers' Association. Other sources of names are Fraser's Canadian Trade Directory and The Thomas Register of American Manufacturers. These publications are usually available in public libraries.
If you wish to make your patent available for sale or licensing, you can publicize your intentions through the Canadian Patent Office Record (CPOR) and the Canadian Patents Database on the Internet. This is a good way of reaching potential investors, since many business people, researchers and others consult this publication to keep in touch with new technology. You may place a sale/licence notice in the CPOR and the Canadian Patents Database on the Internet free of charge, if you make your request when you pay your fee on the grant of your patent. At any other time, you must pay a fee for this notice.
The Patent Office has no control over private organizations that promote inventions, and cannot advise you about them. Seek guidance from the Better Business Bureau of the city in which the organization is located, from your registered patent agent, or from the provincial department responsible for industry or consumer affairs.
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Abuse
of patent rights
Compulsory licences may be granted to remedy what is called "abuse
of patent rights." Such abuse can be considered only three years
after grant. Hindering trade and industry is considered as an abuse.
Abuse situations include:
- not meeting demand in Canada;
- hindering trade or industry in Canada by refusing to grant a licence (if such a licence is in the public interest), or by attaching unreasonable conditions to such a licence;
- using a process patent to unfairly prejudice production of a non-patented product, or allowing the patent on such a product to unfairly prejudice its manufacture, use or sale.
If someone applies for a compulsory licence because they believe that an
abuse situation exists, you may be required to prove that you are not
abusing your patent. In making a decision about such a situation, the
Commissioner tries to ensure the widest possible use of inventions
in Canada, maximum advantage to the patentee, and equality among licensees.
You may appeal decisions by the Commissioner on abuse to the Federal Court of Canada.
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Corresponding
with the Patent Office
Business with the Patent Office is normally done in writing.
Correspondence procedures
If you are enquiring about the status of your pending application, give its serial number, your name and the title of the invention. If you've hired a patent agent, conduct all correspondence through that agent.
Arrange any personal interviews with patent examiners by appointment. This gives them time to review your application before seeing you.
The Office will respond to all general enquiries. The Office cannot, however:
- advise you whether to file an application;
- tell you whether your invention meets patentability criteria prior to your filing an application;
- tell you whether or to whom a patent for any alleged invention has been granted;
- advise you as to possible infringement of a patent;
- act in
any way as an interpreter of patent law, or as a counsellor, other
than in matters directly related to processing your application.
A
Guide to Patents: Patent Information
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Wealth
of technical know-how
In today's world of rapid-fire technological change, the company with
the competitive edge is usually the one tapped into the latest developments
in a given field. Many people tend to think that only large firms with
sophisticated research and development departments can afford to stay
abreast of new technology. They are unaware of the gold mine of inexpensive,
readily available technical know-how waiting to be used at the Patent
Office.
Patents and patent applications can serve as resource materials—much like trade or research journals. They contain a thorough explanation of a particular technology in language that anyone in the field can understand. The patent document provides a wealth of information: a capsule description of a particular technology; background history of a problem; how the new invention overcomes these problems; a complete description for making the invention; and any conditions under which the invention will not work.
Thus, protection for the inventor is only one part of the patent story. By providing information, patents also promote research and development, stimulate the economy and increase the overall level of knowledge of our population.
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Your
research and development partner
With so much information stored in each patent, it's not surprising that
the Patent Office has the largest collection in Canada of current technological
know-how from around the world. The CIPO library contains over 1.7 million
Canadian patent publications (grants and laid-open applications), most
of which are searchable on the Web site or by doing a search in the CIPO
Client Service Centre (CSC). One can also search the more than 6 million
American patent publications in the CSC via the U.S. Patent database.
Patent publications from most industrialized countries are also available.
It receives more than 40 000 applications annually, covering technologies
ranging from biotechnology to disposable diapers.
Some of these patents are merely for "end-of-the-line" improvements, but many are important, pioneer inventions that open up whole new fields in technology. Electronics, for example, started with a patent on a vacuum tube.
The information in these patents not only covers every conceivable field, but may very well be the most up-to-date information available. That is because patent applications are now generally made public long before patents are granted or refused. Indeed, about 70 percent of the information contained in patents does not appear in any trade journal for at least five years after the patent has been granted. At least 50 percent of this information is never published in mainstream technical literature.
An historic example of how patent documents tend to be more current than other publications concerns Hollerith's punched card for computers. A patent was issued on this important invention in 1889, but no other publication told the story until 1914, 25 years later.
A prime goal of the Patent Office is to make patent information available to Canadian industries, universities and research centres, to help them keep abreast of innovations. The resources of the Patent Office are especially useful to small and medium-sized businesses which may be unable to conduct their own research and development.
In fact, ignoring Patent Office resources could cost you time and money, especially if you end up "reinventing the wheel." Some 10 percent of all research and development in Canada does just that, by duplicating patented technology. A search of the patent literature may prevent this kind of wasted effort.
Learning the existing solutions to certain technical problems can also give you ideas for better inventions. In almost any field, some work has already been done somewhere. It makes sense to attack a problem with all the available knowledge at hand. Perhaps the solution to the problem exists in a foreign patent, and you may be able to use it without restriction here in Canada.
Patent documents can also reveal trends and sources of new products, show what the competition is doing at home and abroad, and help you find new suppliers, markets or know-how that you can use under licence.
Keep in mind that Canada is a net importer of intellectual property, including patents. Of the more than 30 million patents in the world, approximately 1.5 million are Canadian and all are available. Most of the state-of-the-art technology from highly industrialized countries such as the United States, Japan, or Germany comes to Canada via the patent system.
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Summary
of benefits of a patent search
If you are a business person, researcher, engineer or student, a search
through patent documents can help you:
- identify trends and developments in a specified field of technology;
- discover new product lines which you can license from the patentee or use without needing a licence;
- find information that prevents duplication of research;
- identify unproductive avenues of enquiry by reading about the current state of the art;
- keep track of the work of a particular individual or company by seeing what patents they have been granted;
- find a solution to a technical problem;
- gain new
ideas for research in a particular field.
Your competitors may be using the information in patent documents to their advantage. Can anyone afford to ignore it?
Check
your e-mail tomorrow for Part 5 of the
Guide to Patents in Canada.
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