Trademarks and Patents

The original idea and what you should do

Trademarks were invented to identify. To make it clear who makes a good or service. Seth Godin says it’s the mark we put on something we create to indicate the source of the thing, not the inventor of a word or even a symbol. They didn’t invent the trademark law to prevent me from putting a picture of your cricket team’s logo on my blog. They invented it to make it clear who was selling you something (a mark for trade = trademark).

Patents are not the quick way to protect an idea. It’s actually impossible to protect an idea, don’t try.

The worry, time, and energy you invest in protecting your idea will stop you from implementing it. Doing the work and sharing your idea will make it bigger and better and you need all the resources you can muster to do that so, waste none of it.

Patents were not designed to protect ideas but the specific execution of useful innovations.

If you are hell-bent on protecting your idea, well, patents may be an option except they are expensive and only give you the right to sue.

Most patent trolls do work that is not true and spin money off innocent entrepreneurs.

Bonus, Copyrights were not invented to protect ideas but the expression of it… the work, the exact arrangement of words, sounds, or images.

The point, do not obsess over your idea and try so hard to protect it because you can’t, rather, share it and work on it. By the way, we are in the connection economy, just like we were once in the industrial age and your ideas are better off when shared.

I should write about it later this week, you should read. Stick around