Protecting Your Invention: Tips from an Intellectual Property Lawyer.

• Author: Marquez-Stricker, Francisco
• Position: Feature: Low for Entrepreneurs

The million-dollar idea. It's the holy grail of inventorship, the kind of thing that inventors and entrepreneurs spend their careers pursuing. But those that do manage to turn their efforts into a golden idea are often confronted with an uncomfortable reality: leveraging that invention for a profit is often just as hard, if not harder, than coming up with the invention in the first place. As an intellectual property lawyer, I'm well aware of how daunting the task of commercializing a new invention can seem. Even worse, inexperienced parties venturing into this field for the first time often fall victim to a set of all too common mistakes. In this article, I've attempted to distill some of the key lessons I've learned from past client interactions, presentations and dinner party conversations with would-be inventors into three overarching tips on how to make the most of your million-dollar idea.

"Silence is Golden"

We've all heard the proverb before. While it almost certainly wasn't written with an eye towards intellectual property law, it is still surprisingly good advice for anyone with a promising idea. The first impulse most people have when they come up with a great idea is to tell someone about it. Unfortunately, this is usually the worst thing they can do, for a number of reasons.

First, just because an idea is yours, it doesn't necessarily mean you have the right to stop someone else from using it. The law draws a sharp line between "ideas" and "inventions". An "idea" is a loose thought or concept, whereas an "invention" is a product or process that is well defined enough as to be actual built or used to solve a problem. Often, when someone thinks they have come up with a great concept, all they have is a mere idea. For example, if an inventor came up with the concept of recycling the heat from engine exhaust and using it to reheat a car, this would most likely qualify as a mere idea. The idea is the problem which could be solved, and the general method of solving it. The invention would be the tangible steps involved in the solution. Unfortunately, the law generally doesn't afford protection for mere ideas. If the inventor were to disclose this idea to a third party, there would likely be nothing stopping that person from taking the idea for themselves.

Second, even if you do have an invention, disclosing it can actually prevent you from eventually obtaining rights. For any inventor, one of the main options available to stop other...