1. Do I need Patent ? is it worth ? advantages of patent in Japan

Do I need Patent? is it worth the investment?

Do I really need a Patent in Japan? Is it worth the investment? With a granted patent, you gain exclusive rights, preventing direct competition and enabling you to monetize your invention through licensing, selling, or building a business around it. Without a patent, competitors can copy your innovative solution, potentially leading to lost market share and profits. Patents offer advantages such as high-profit potential, recognition as an industry expert, better funding opportunities, and increased market value.

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In this article, we will discuss some of the important things you need to consider when deciding whether to invest in filing a patent for your invention or not… What if I don’t go for a patent and use that money somewhere else or in building or growing my business?

Fair questions and the main motive behind these questions is that you want to know if you will be getting the return on the investment (ROI)? for the cost that you are considering for patenting your invention.

Now, to answer this in the simplest possible way, we will take an example.

What if you do not patent your invention

Let’s imagine a scenario; you are a business owner or a professional and you are continuously being challenged with different problems in your business on a daily basis

While doing that you happened to come up with an innovative solution for your business. The solution has a commercial value in the market.

Let’s go fast forward and your company is successful !!! because you have implemented that solution in your business and you are enjoying success in the market due to that solution.

And then, the competitors will jump in and they are there to compete. and they will be trying to take as much market share as possible for your solution.

How? Your competitors will take your product or your innovative solution, reverse engineer it and then they will:

  • try to beat you on prices
  • will try to beat you on quality may be selling a low-quality product at a cheaper price and
  • they probably will try to beat you on large-scale production

Competitors would do whatever things possible for them to compete and capture your market share.

Even small competitor companies would be able to produce similar products and sell them at much lower prices since they do not have to consider the R and D cost in the equation.

Furthermore, your opportunity to license or sell your invention is lost since you have not protected it by filing a patent.

and; a competitor firm may come up with a similar invention to which they might file a Patent, and then you will have to take permission from them (i.e. patent owner) to use the invention or you need to pay license fees for using the patented invention…

And ultimately even though you are the inventor/creator of that solution; you are the person who first made that innovative idea and worked on it and bring that solution to life, still you end up on the losing side.

And it’s not at all a typical case, it happens more often than not.

We see this happening to businesses around us quite frequently. All the competitive advantage and potential of making significant profits with your innovative idea go to waste. And you don’t have any option but to give in to the ever-growing competition and lose.

What if you do patent your invention

Compare this situation with another situation, where you have filed a patent application for your invention and you got a patent granted for it.

Now the situation is different, the competition cannot directly compete with you as a patent gives you exclusive rights. “the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, importing or offering for sale your patented invention without your permission”

In this case, you yourself can calculate the return on investment for your invention; If you can

  • build a business around it,
  • raise funding for the patented invention or
  • license it to other businesses or
  • sell the patented invention altogether.

There would be a very high potential of profits with your investment when you patent for your invention, provided your invention has commercial potential and you as an inventor or the owner of the invention has the ability and skills required to commercialize the patented invention, and in-process make significant money for your research and development efforts.

So, the answer to the question, why should I go for patent is : “You want to file patent and protect your invention because you don’t want competitors to directly copy your invention and start competing you in market”

Another example to illustrate this,

Do you know the age of empires? a mythological game;

Age of empires

what will happen if a player or kingdom only focuses on the financial growth of the country and completely ignores building walls castles and armies? ever made that mistake while playing?  soon you would be attacked by nearby kingdoms and their army would destroy you. And there is a lesson to be learned from it.

Of course, making financial progress, business growth and more profits are important. However, it is more important to protect your business with intellectual properties like patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, etc… which ultimately would be protecting your future profits from the ever-growing competition !!!

Not protecting the intellectual property of your business would be like building a rich, prosperous country without a defense mechanism or army. Hence, It will always be under threat, of attack and invasion by other countries (i.e. competitors).

Now, all of these examples we have seen from business owners’ or entrepreneurs’ perspectives, however, the inherent advantages and benefits of having a patent for your invention stay the same even though you are a student, working professional, or employee, or research and development person.

The purpose of patent: The main purpose of a patent is to provide protection for your invention from being copied or being commercially exploited by competitors. and the decision about whether or not to file a patent for your invention ultimately comes down to the level of seriousness you have about the protection of your invention (innovative idea)

Are patents worth ? deciding whether to file or not ?

There are 2 ways to look at worth of patent: 

Direct benefits of patent : this is when you have direct and measurable benefits contributing to the worth of patent like

  • cost of selling patent 
  • royalties on licensing or 
  • damages claimed after infringement etc.

Indirect benefits of patent : this is when you have indirect benefits that are contributing to the worth of patent when

  • Competitor does not copy your invention
  • You could sell patented invention at decent profits because of no direct competition
  • You or your firm is considered an expert of the industry 
  • You can raise money due to granted patent
  • You can mortgage or take loan on granted patent
  • It strengthens your resume
  • It can earn you promotions, praises and recognition etc…

while deciding whether to file or not to file patent application, if the granted patent for your invention achieves atleast one of the points mentioned above which is valubale to you.

example 1: if you are a student and by getting patent you would be happy to receive recognition, strengthen your resume and getting better job opportunity due to the patent then it would be worth the investment for you.

example 2: having patent for a product of your company helps you establish yourself as an expert in the industry or help increase the value of the firm in eyes of investors or buyers then investing in patent would be worth for your firm.

Generally, it depends on the purpose you wish to achieve by patent, which helps you decide whether it would be worth the investment or not.

Now, Let’s see what are the advantages of getting patent protection for your invention.

Advantages of getting a patent for your invention

Owning an intellectual property has some similarities with owning any other form of tangible property like real estate. So, what are the advantages of having a real estate property in your name?

  • You can rent it
  • You can sell it
  • You can stop others from using the real estate without your permission
  • You can use the real estate for your purpose (business or residence)

Apart from this obvious comparison with real estate, Patents have some unique advantages that makes it a very valuable asset for patent owner.

  • You own exclusive rights for patented invention for a given time (20 years from the filing of patent application) you can exclude others from using, selling, offering for sale, and importing your patented invention in Japan.
  • since competitors can not directly compete with you for patented invention you may have high margin of profits since you as a patent owner has right to produce, import or sell the patented invention
  • You can make a significant return on the investment that you made for research and development and patenting your invention by:
    • licensing your patent to other companies,
    • building business around your invention, or
    • completely selling it to other companies.
  • You will have better chances of getting funding for your idea, business, product, etc. If it is protected by patent, investors see this as an opportunity to make significant profits since you can stop competition from directly copying your invention.
  • You or your firm having a granted patent for invention would be seen as an expert in the industry which would help attract better business partners, investors, channel partners, clients, and even attracting better employees.
  • If you or your firm creates a portfolio of patents in a specific field that is commercially important, then the chances of big corporations working in the field may be ready to pay you large sums of money for acquiring a patent portfolio.

Examples of famous patent success stories are:

  1. Microsoft buys 800 patents for $1.1 Billion from AOL
  2. Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

Ultimately what it means is, A granted patent for your invention enhances your market value.

Another important advantage of having patents is it makes it difficult for competition to directly compete with you. Even if you are a small firm or a solopreneur, having a granted patent for an important invention in the industry can help you gain a significant market share of the industry while competing against larger businesses too.

Compared to other forms of intellectual property right like trade secret that protects important (proprietary) information of a firm, you do not need to keep patents secret. This avoids the risk in case of a trade secret where information may get leaked and become public then you lose entire protection, whereas, in case of patent protection, there is no such need as patents are already published and yet the protection would be there till the expiry of the term of the patent as long as it is renewed time to time.

Some important guidelines you may wish to read are :

When deciding if it is worth filing patent

When you are deciding if you need to file patent for your invention, It is important to understand that Patents are not only granted to groundbreaking inventions that change the world !!! In reality, the patents are also granted to incremental inventions !!!  Inventions that have a novel solution to a technical problem, may that problem be small (but significant and qualify for the non-obviousness test).

 “Most patents aren’t granted for groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs, but rather for inventions that make improvements to existing inventions.” 

What that means is, most of the part of your solution may be already known to the public (that is available in the market, patented, or published in journals)  but you might have come up with something that is not an obvious solution to a person skilled in the art (i.e. field of the invention) and solve a small problem in existing solutions. In this such case, the inventor still can get a patent granted for his invention if other patentability criteria are met by his invention.

Many inventors get discouraged by seeing something similar to their invention in the market, published or known to the public… what they fail to realize is they may still have novelty and Non-obviousness in their invention although apparently, it looks similar to things already known to the public.

Don’t get discouraged if you see things already in the market, published or known to the public which is somewhat similar to your invention… You still may have something in your invention that can win a patent.

You may refer to our detailed section on ” how to go from idea to invention and to granted patent”

Prasad Karhad
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