a good approach to a patent it to decide what part of your product is the part you actually invented
take for instance the Segway - it is not really feasible to patent the whole thing, however, the most important part of a segway, the part that actually makes it stay upright is the solid state rate gyro, that is the important part and that is the part you need to patent the most. The rest of it is just electric motors, gears and plastic, none of that lot is really that clever.
If you control the patent to the crucial part of the tech, you control the product.
The other side of the coin however is that you have to fully disclose, in all the intimate detail, the method of how it works. For this reason, companies like 3M often don't patent things because they have to disclose the details of the product - thereby giving their competitors a starting point for further research. If they think a competitor wont be able to work out what 3M put in their adhesives for instance, then they wont patent it.
take for instance the Segway - it is not really feasible to patent the whole thing, however, the most important part of a segway, the part that actually makes it stay upright is the solid state rate gyro, that is the important part and that is the part you need to patent the most. The rest of it is just electric motors, gears and plastic, none of that lot is really that clever.
If you control the patent to the crucial part of the tech, you control the product.
The other side of the coin however is that you have to fully disclose, in all the intimate detail, the method of how it works. For this reason, companies like 3M often don't patent things because they have to disclose the details of the product - thereby giving their competitors a starting point for further research. If they think a competitor wont be able to work out what 3M put in their adhesives for instance, then they wont patent it.
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