IT Enthusiast — Patenting your idea?

Patenting your idea?

Hundreds of times I have come across the people who have the idea. Well, really they come across me to consult. Usually it looks like:

- Ahoy friend! I have a million-dollars idea!
- Eh-hm… Congrats.
- I could not do it myself, so I want to make friendship with some developer who will do this for me and we’ll share profit (as I have no ready money too).
- Well. Best Luck to you.
- But how can I patent my Idea so that intended team-mates could not steal it?

Short answer: YOU CAN’T

You can patent something precise. Some algorithm. Some mechanism. Some formula. I.e. some invention.

But idea is quite abstract. You were sitting in your arm-chair, eating cherries or puffing your pipe and come with the idea of some game or some web-site? Nice. But there are billions of people and some of them also were sitting in chairs and in the mood of generating ideas. So, believe me, many came to similar idea. Probably some even tried to implement it (yes, do not forget to research)…

You should not think that as soon as you have some less or more vague “Idea” you can sell it to investor or entrepreneur and spend the rest of your life in richness.

It does not work this way. Even more, you should get ready to the fact that no one believes in your idea - neither investors, nor developers. Sad truth is that idea is nothing until you at least have some working prototype, or gather some money to build it with others’ hands.

One of the reasons is that as working on idea is in progress, a lot of changes tend to appear. Some proposed by you, some by your technical assistants or designers, and many proposed by your intended users (they do know better what they want of your idea). So the “initial idea” is really worthless by itself.

If you still do not believe, think of some famous game like “Angry Birds” or “Tetris”. Their brand names are protected - you will surely get banned if you publish the game with such name (e.g. “very angry birds” or “color tetris”) - but still there are zounds of clones under different names. Why is it so? Because cloning the idea is not restricted.

To make idea winning you a fortune you need to put some efforts - to implement it, to advertise it, to maintain and extend it. So it is not your idea that will bring you the fortune, but your hard work on this idea.