Posts Tagged: "David and Goliath"

How the ‘Davids’ of the World Can Effectively Manage Their Companies’ Intellectual Property

I have often thought of the patent process as being like the car wash near my house – where you pull up to the entrance, to the point where an attendant shouts “neutral!”, and your car is then magically pulled through a defined series of stations until it comes out clean at the other end. The key difference being – the car wash takes five minutes, costs six bucks, and requires no effort. Not so with patents. In a way, the patent system can be seen as a far more rigorous 20-year car wash – beginning from the moment you pull into the patent office by filing your first application, thereby obtaining that all important Filing Date. You are then led along an arduous path of decisions, deadlines, and stages – all with corresponding costs. No matter when and where you might actually obtain a patent along that path, assuming you do at all, you are out the door (i.e., those patents will expire) generally 20 years to the day after you first heard “neutral!”.