Advantages and Disadvantages of Patents

So basically patents are this legal but very important way for many individuals, businesses, or companies all over the world to protect new products and technologies that innovators create, you know? Talking about the valid duration, well, in many nation-states, they may be around 20 years long. On the other hand, though, you are allowed to be the only person who can design, develop, manufacture, use, and sell or distribute the invention among the public for that specific time period. But if you are wondering like why such things called patents even exist, and why people need to patent their inventions, well, then you should know that if the patent wasn’t even a thing, literally everybody could copy and sell your product. Let’s understand the patents benefits and drawbacks:

Advantages of Patents

1. Best Way To Market Dominance

See, in the simplest words possible, getting a patent is the only way to gain full power over your creations. In other words, no one will be able to build, use, sell, or even distribute your patented invention without your permission at least for some time, which is normally close to 20 years in most of the countries around the world. And that’s the best bit about why people go for patenting their invention, you know?

2. Investors’ Dream Come True

If you have a patented business or invention, you might seem more convincing in the eyes of investors, and why shouldn’t you? To be honest, a product or idea that is patented is a sign of originality and protection from copying, so the risk of your product being copied by others is really minimized. Investors prefer this because it ensures that their money will not be wasted.

3. Making Money Without Lifting a Finger

One of the very innovative and best aspects of patents is that they can generate income for their owner even without the owner needing to manufacture the patented product. And who’s that? Well, the license of the patent can be given to anybody else and they can produce and sell your product through them and give you a fee or perfect of sales revenue if you want them to. Another option is that you can completely sell your patent, that’s another way right there to make a good amount of money in no time.

4. Boosting Your Credibility

If you want the people who are already your customers or investors to trust you, register a patent for your product, and that’ll do it. See, it works like this: giving assurance of the high quality of your invention to the customers and thus differentiating it from all the others in the market can increase the market value of your product so much in the eyes of your clients that you become the first to get it.

5. Legal Protection Against Infringement

See, in a way, patents are the legal way to prevent others from copying your invention, and that’s why you should go for it. More importantly, if someone uses your invention without your approval, the law gives you the right to sue them and possibly get damages and an injunction against them. So yes, it’ll all be worth it.

6. Potential for Big Profits

Let’s say you have a one-of-a-kind product, and you patent that, well, there is no one who can stop you from being a monopoly in the market in that case. In this way, you can set higher prices, as there is no other product on the market that can be a direct alternative to yours.

Disadvantages of Patents

1. Pricey to Get and Keep

No one can deny that getting a patent is somewhat like a very dear dream of most inventors and that’s just because it really is pricey to get and keep for the long term, you know? Like, the number of stages it goes via, including filing fees, attorney fees, and even getting the drawings of your actual products will cost you a lot.

2. The Waiting Game

Getting a patent takes not only money but you’d have to put in a lot of time and effort. And even after applying for a patent, you’d have to wait for a long time to get it approved. You must understand that it is a process: a range of issues should be considered in order to get permission to get that vision patent of yours, you know? And it could be that by the time your patent is approved, you are not very relevant, or somebody already started selling such a product in the market.

3. Sharing the Details

During the patent application stage, you have to present very complete information about your invention and its working on the system. And since this information can be accessed publicly, well, that can very well destroy the secrecy of your product, you know?

4. Limited Lifespan, Of Course

You cannot keep a patent on your creation for an indefinite time. Usually, after 20 years (for utility patents), anyone is free to utilize your invention without requiring your consent. So yes, if your invention is something that could continue generating good profit within the long run you just might find this temporal nature of a patent just really unfair.

5. Not That Easy To Enforce

And it is not like you got the patent in your hand, and now you are good to go. Let’s say you are just a small business or individual who has patented something, but then some huge company or business starts to sell your patented item. In that case, you can surely sue the big corporation, but you’d have to get into that court battle thing, and that’ll certainly be a costly thing, and it’ll be frustrating as well. So, keep that in mind too.

Comparison Table for Advantages and Disadvantages of Patents