When do you patent and what do you need to do?

[InsideSpin]

When forming a business, you may come across an opportunity to patent an idea, what do you need to do and at what stage would you pursue the patent?

[InsideSpin]

Simply put, patent as soon as you can. It's not a challenging process to file a patent -- mostly an exercise in documenting your invention and some filing fees. There are many companies who will take money from you to help with this, you can likely do it yourself as the web contains many examples and the patent database is itself on-line for you to look at. The idea is to protect your ideas to put yourself in a position of leverage if a competitor is gaining ground on you -- but using your idea.

[sethier]

Do patents protect your ideas from being stolen if they are stolen from other countries? I.e.: You develop something here in Canada, and its reversed engineered in China and then resold in Canada for a cheaper price?

[InsideSpin]

You have identified one of the weaknesses in the global patent business. Generally speaking, the advice you would get is to file patents in major centers such as Canada, US and perhaps centrally in Europe with EMEA -- if someone steals your patent in China, there is little you can do. I'm not the expert legally in this area, but I do believe if someone is selling a product into Canada based on your patent, you can ultimately stop them from within Canada. Having said that, I suspect the legal costs and challenges are high to pursue these issues. The best advice will come from a patent lawyer, so please do not use my reply as a source of authoritative expertize.

In terms of protecting from China, it is my understanding that there is less copying of IP in china then there used to be as the gov't realizes it is hindering the country's overall ability to operate internationally if IP trust is not in place. Be careful in any case -- if you idea is good enough that someone does want to copy it, one of your best protections is to own the desired distribution channel preventing them from getting it into North America (e.g. resellers, retail outlet agreements, whatever it may be).

It's a touchy subject, hopefully this was helpful.