A start-up company's view of patents

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Last week we invited the former head of law at the Innovation Workshop, the current partner of the Silicon Valley branch law firm, Juberchun, to share his vision of the venture company's patents, and this time we look at the problem from the perspective of startups themselves. "Love" is a start-up company focused on creating a mobile Internet marriage platform that has been applying for patents in the course of its product development and has submitted 7 applications since May 2011, with 2 approved. Let's take a look at how its founder, Shiqing, looks at start-up companies applying for patents.

In fact, the Internet industry's start-up companies have pros and cons to apply for patents. Where is the first answer? Patent, fundamentally speaking, belongs to a commercial means. In addition to technical, there are many other uses. For example, you can upgrade your image through a product or a company-owned patent, you can get a mortgage on a bank, you can use a patent to raise the company's intangible assets, or even a patent to limit the amount of premium space a competitor can give to its own product.

We have been sued by a fellow overseas, on the grounds that love has used their patents (we did not copy their products, but mistakenly entered the patent mined areas they applied for). They filed a lawsuit against Apple's App store to get our apps off the shelf. But after we analyzed, we found that the other side also used our application for a micro-bo friends patent, so we immediately to the other side of the patent infringement lawsuit against. Our intention is not to sanction each other, but to protect ourselves. As a result, the other party took the lawsuit.

But, in addition to bringing benefits, patents can also bring some drawbacks. The most basic characteristics of the patent, in addition to "exclusive", there is "public", that is, "patent to public." In China, because of the serious plagiarism, the Internet's patents are not thoroughly protected, it is easy to directly lead to leaks. In addition, in the Internet project, many patent algorithms are window paper. As long as you are open, competitors are easy to refer to.

Is there any way to avoid the risk of such leaks? We have two experiences: 1. According to Apple's approach, not directly to the company's name to apply for a patent, but in the name of a subsidiary or individual to apply. This is not easy to be retrieved by the competitor, and is not easy to be targeted by opponents. 2. In writing a patent, pay attention to technical use, as far as possible not to leak the core algorithm and implementation model. Generally speaking, it is enough to describe a good algorithm framework, which will not affect the patent application, but also let the opponents copy without door.

So what is the specific procedure for a patent application? Many entrepreneurs may think that a patent copy is highly complex and must be manipulated by a specialized lawyer, intimidated by huge costs. But our experience tells you that the writing and application of patent copy is not difficult.

For example, when we write a marriage based on SNS matching patent, because it is the first time to write such software algorithm patents, and limited funding. We went to the patent Office's website to download an Alibaba software patent document for reference. By referring to Alibaba's patent writing format, we passed the application for the first time. However, it must be pointed out that reference to the patent documents of large companies is not to allow you to copy other people's content, just refer to other people's writing format and writing methods. Alibaba, Google and other large enterprises have full-time intellectual property lawyers, writing patent copy is very professional, whether from the logic to the sample format is a good model. Startups can be used to learn a lot about reducing time costs.

Through such a process, our costs have been greatly reduced, the single cost fell to 10,000 yuan. This is very meaningful for startups that are strapped for cash.

However, it is worth pointing out that the patent is not armored steel fist. It's not enough to have a patent, you have to pay attention to other forms of intellectual property. For example, you want to create a lasting company (for test-water entrepreneurs, because the application of patents, trademarks, such as the period of 1-2 years, if only the test water business does not need to toss patents and trademarks, and 3 years later continue to operate, then you need to pay attention to patents, trademarks and other types of intellectual property rights. Because enterprises in the initial period of start-up patent application, trademark application costs are not high, and once the enterprise reached the scale, its application for patents and trademarks will likely be much higher costs. Especially in the case of patent pool extortion, the processing of more waste of resources.

Therefore, in our opinion, the early stage of entrepreneurship, if there is a good patent is the best to apply. The shortage of time and money resources is not an excuse, because once the takeover solicitation, patent extortion and other circumstances, the value of the patent will be suddenly released.

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