When you are working on a patent, it is important to have a clear strategy and roadmap that everyone involved in your project can follow. When you are organized and goal-oriented, your strategy will go a lot smoother, and your chances of being issued a successful patent from the USPTO in a timely fashion will increase significantly. No matter if this is your first or your thousandth patent, everyone will agree that a strategy is foundational to a well-run project and a successful patent submission.

Take a look at these five steps that we suggest when you are developing a strategy.

Set Clear Goals

Without clear goals, your team will have a difficult time knowing if the work they are doing is aligning with your expectations and the required outcomes. Goals are the bedrock of a successful project, and when you are developing a patent strategy, these goals are no less important.

It is important to understand that you will likely need to set drastically different goals for each person involved in the process, depending on their specific role.

Determine Necessary Patents

If your concept is built off of the idea of a single patent, are you sure that you will only need that one patent? While you are working towards getting your patent developed, submitted, and approved, it is also a good time to start thinking about any other protections you may need to either file for, acquire, or pay royalties for.

If you determine that you need to acquire or license more patents in order to capitalize on your own invention, you will want to understand the financial requirements to expect, and how this will affect your long-term strategy for marketing and selling your product.

Develop a Monetization Plan

If you are going to be putting the work in to develop a new innovation, make sure that you have a plan for how you are going to monetize it. Developing an invention and then applying for the patent is not cheap; once you get your patent, be ready to start executing a strategy to monetize your innovation by production, licensing, or some other way to develop an income.

Patents are important tools for many reasons, but capitalizing on intellectual property is the main motivator behind most patents. If you have an invention but are unsure of your ability to run a business around it, speak with someone who is experienced in patent law in Orlando about your possibility of licensing your patent, or perhaps selling it to a larger company.

Understand Patent Law

Patent law is just as important, if not more important, than the patent development itself. Without a firm understanding of the laws that will support you once you receive your patent, you may find yourself at a serious disadvantage in the market. Speak with a patent lawyer in Orlando to discuss your plan, your options, and how you will be able to take advantage of your intellectual property once the USPTO grants you exclusivity.

Research the Market

Even if you are granted a patent for your intellectual property, it does not guarantee that you will be successful. You may ultimately find that the market does not need your innovation, or perhaps there is an easier or more appealing way to achieve the same result that is not covered by your patent.

When you understand the market that you are innovating for, you lessen your risk of spending both time and financial resources developing a patent that does not serve you in the end.

Ultimately, the keys to a patent strategy are organization, planning, and communication across your team and all of your stakeholders in the project. Without these, you may be able to achieve your ultimate goal, but following our guidelines will be a big help.

There was a time when if there was a scandal within a business then a press release would be drawn up by its public relations department within the hour. In the modern world it does not seem to work in the same way. There are a number of different avenues available in which statements to the wider world can be made today, all of them seeming to be without the use of an in-house PR management department. Is this the way the PR world is now? How did it get that way?

Brand responsibility

Brands have always been involved with how they are portrayed by the media. Whether it is via press releases and statements or by carrying out an interview with someone who is influential within the media. It could be a high profile TV interview, or an interview with a prominent reporter. Such events were always carried out under the watchful eye of the internal PR department. Brands would see it as their own responsibility to control their brand reputation and an internal PR department was regarded as the best way to do so. It meant that costs and budget could be controlled by the brand itself as well as fostering more loyalty than an outside PR company would offer. Things have changed however, and the PR industry is staring into the abyss.

As the internet began to gain more influence on the world at large, the influence of internal PR departments began to wane. A blogger with a huge amount of reach could easily dismantle the work of a PR department. This meant that brands began to change tack and instead of trying to control how their brand was seen by the public, they instead tried to get influential people within their sphere on their side. Of course, if a brand has made an enemy of someone who has a large amount of influence then this can lead to false stories being widely believed. In this situation it is important to have someone like Reputation Defender on board who can protect your brand from malicious disinformation. They will make sure that anything that is false about your brand will be taken down before it has the opportunity to be widely viewed, which in turn will protect your brand reputation from any long-term lasting damage.

The social media generation

Part of the trouble that internal PR departments and PR firms in general, have struggled with, is the rise of social media influencers. Because they are able to get an opinion out to their followers within seconds of something happening, it is often difficult for your brand’s internal PR department to react quickly enough. If something goes viral then it will be spread around the world in a few hours. As the saying goes, a lie gets half of the way around the world before the truth even has its shoes on. A lot of brands have got rid of their PR departments because of that or have merged them with their burgeoning new social media departments.

While some brands have taken to social media very well and are able to use it to their advantage, not all brands are able to use it as effectively. In such situations some brands have taken to using noted influencers to carry out PR for them. When a social media influencer is able to speak directly to followers in a positive light about a brand it adds a level of authenticity to what is being said. A brand speaking about itself in glowing terms does not have as much impact as someone that people trust commenting about it. This is one of the newest forms of brand promotion that has arisen with the advent of social media.

Why PR is still important

While PR departments might be slowly dying out, PR itself is still important. A brand can lose half of its customer base or share value purely from the result of a negative impact on its reputation. Because of this it is vitally important to manage your brand reputation as well as you can. Whether this is via an active social media team or from using social influencers from within your sphere, there are a number of ways to make sure that your brand is seen in a positive light. So, while internal PR departments may be on their way out, managing PR itself is just as important now as it has ever been.