Articles
Robert Games, MD of intellectual property attorneys Albright IP
For those seeking to convert an invention into a product, crowdfunding offers a great way to meet the costs. But care is needed. The most common mistake made by people who use crowdfunding is failing to protect their intellectual property (IP) adequately.
When crowdfunding, you’re putting your invention out there for the world to see, and you need to have robust IP protection in place first. A public disclosure, such as putting your invention up on a web-based crowd-funding platform, is a bar to UK and European patenting. Without IP protection, you are at risk of being copied, and your options for protection will be limited.
In the first instance, it’s important to protect your product’s look, functionality or branding. You can achieve this by securing patents for functional elements, registering designs for appearance, and registering trademarks to protect your brand. Equally, you don’t want to build a crowdfunding campaign and then find you have to change your product’s functionality, appearance or name because it infringes on someone else’s IP rights.
Another problem we see with crowdfunding is a lack of product development. If your idea hasn’t been developed properly and there are clear ways to improve it, then other people may take the opportunity to do it better themselves, or you may simply lose potential investors. When you are looking to gain investment, people will judge the design quickly, so obvious flaws will have an impact on the appeal.
To make it clear what makes your product unique, you should do the following:
• Set out and explain, concisely, the problem that your product has been designed to solve
• Make sure you are presenting a well thought-through and developed solution
• Ensure you have a functional prototype
• Identify and explain what makes your product different
• Show the product in the context of why it was created, so people understand its use and how it functions
• Focus your efforts on your researched target market – who’s going to benefit from this solution?
You then need to decide how much you need to raise. Setting the right crowdfunding target is vital – too much, and you may not attract any funding; too little, and you won’t achieve your promises to investors.
As part of our product development work, we carry out a production quotation stage. This involves creating a detailed manufacturing specification so your chosen manufacturer can provide accurate tooling and unit costs.
If your product is not yet finalised, you will need a clear plan of the steps needed to reach the production quotation stage, including the time this will take and the additional costs. Such a plan will ensure that you can build realistic timescales into your crowdfunding, thereby avoiding any negativity around the campaign before the product has even been delivered.
As you start to get investment, keep people updated on progress, build momentum with interest, and continue to push this forward once your product breaks onto the market.
For more details, see www.albright-ip.co.uk