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This might be slightly controversial but i thought i would put down some of my own thoughts on whether to patent an idea or not.

Putting this into perspective, having designed hundreds of bits of outdoor kit. There have only been two occasions where i felt that a patent may have been an good option. On both occasions the cost of obtaining a patent, would of been higher than the profit generated by the product.  Patents are not always a good idea.

My first reservation about patents is the cost. Although there not that expensive to start with, the bills can soon to start to tot up. A UK patent will cost around £1500, and you can easy add an extra zero to this the more countries you want to protect. So when you start the ball rolling, you need to be sure where it will stop.

My second reservation is that they are not totally ironclad, lets say you invent a new type of waterproof zip like Barny in last years colab competition. You could bet your bottom dollar that the likes of YKK and RiRi would find some way to get round the patent. If you dont have the money to defend the patent robustly then you could spend even more money and still be no better off.

By biggest reservation with them is that when you trawl though the millions of patents many of them are just rubbish ideas. Why go to the hassle a patenting a rubbish idea, that someone is never going to buy it. Just because it has a patent doesn’t mean that it is good design or concept. The Ikea Kipplin sofa doesn’t have patent yet Ikea probably make buckets full of cash from it. If the best product is presented to the consumer at the right price and the right place and promoted well then it’s got a good chance of selling. If you burden the product with a load of patent costs you might have to charge more for the product and then have no chance of selling it.

I’m not saying patents dont have there place, just that you need to be sure what the patent is doing for you.

Cheers

Nick

In addition to Nicks wise words above (ie. even if you can afford to buy one, you probably can’t afford to protect it against a big company with better lawyers, experience and wads of cash) you should also consider how much showing your designs to people can help in its development.

Your users are the most important people in the design process; if the first time people see your product is at the outdoors show because you have been too worried about compromising your IP to get it out there you run the risk of it not fulfilling the users needs as you (one person, however experienced you may be) imagined it would.

Stop worrying about it and get people involved! People will give you (for free!!) great feedback on your designs and loads of ideas to improve it, you will make good contacts and you never know where that can lead; I showed a prototype of a climbing training aid I designed to a top UK climber just to see what she thought, she told me to get in touch with Alpkit who loved it, are planning to make it a reality and gave me a job!

[blondemoment] I clicked on the wrong poll reply. I forgot to re-read the question and thought ‘Yes. I agree with what you are saying.’ [/blondemoment] So sorry Nick, the poll should be one vote the other way.

Yep patents in general work to the benefit of whoever can afford to spend the most on the IP lawyers!

You should do it man. A patent (pronounced /ˈpætənt/ or /ˈpeɪtənt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention.

The procedure for granting patents, the requirements placed on the patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must be new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. In many countries, certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods and mental acts. The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries is the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, or distributing the patented invention without permission.
Under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, patents should be available in WTO member states for any inventions, in all fields of technology, and the term of protection available should be the minimum twenty years. Different types of patents may have varying patent terms (i.e., durations).

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