207: 4 Parts of Intellectual Property for a Hardware Startup

With Steven Weigler, Founding Attorney at EmergeCounsel

Hosted by Kevin Mako, President of MAKO Design + Invent

Steven Weigler is a seasoned attorney and successful entrepreneur who has worked for a number of large corporations in the intellectual property arena. Presently a Founding Attorney at EmergeCounsel, Steven is poised to share immensely valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers. Today, he will delve into the four types of intellectual property protection, how to use these protections to increase the value of your hardware product business, and how these protections work collaboratively. 

Here are the key takeaways from the episode:

• What are the 4 key elements of intellectual property for a physical product startup?
• Growing for an exit or growing to build a market has many similarities.
• Intellectual property means intangible assets created by the mind.
• Intellectual property is carried on the balance sheet as an asset.
• Intellectual property can be hard to quantify.
• Patents can be either a design patent on the unique design of a product and/or the utility, meaning the functionality of the product.
• Patent exclusivity is for the country you file for.
• You must have a year in the market before you can patent the product.
• Design patents are easier to get than utility patents.
• You can improve on your own product and get a patent later.
• Sometimes, a patent doesn’t add value to a particular product.
• Trademarks protect the brand image, and these types of intellectual property protections can be a very valuable yet understated form of value for a hardware startup.
• Your brand is identity, and your brand is trust!
• Your brand is going to grow, even though it starts at zero.
• Trademark protection is quite inexpensive.
• Copyright protects all works of art; code, product packaging, and many other things can have certain protections under copyright.
• The Berlin Convention ensures that many countries honour the copyrights of other countries.
• Trade Secrets are not thought of as IP; however, those secrets can be a large part of the intellectual property of a product business.
• All of these strategies employed together help prevent other entities from copying your product.
• If you enact all of these intellectual property protection tactics, it will also grow the value of your product business significantly!

Steven Weigler Links:

LinkedIn | EmergeCounsel

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

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MAKO Design Links:

https://www.makodesign.com

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Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Producer: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to the above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories.