TFT: Do You Have Something to Patent?

Weighing the Pros and Cons and Exploring the Strategic Value of Patents for Your Innovations

Apr 17, 2025

On a flight I saw something that sparked my interest. The barf bag that we all know and love on airplanes is patented. Hopefully your experience with these bags is similar to my where you just see them sitting the seat back pocket. Maybe you pick up a couple and ask the person next to you, “Hey you going to use that? Not sure if I have enough.” If you do have to use them regularly I’m sorry. But what this brought to mind for me was the idea of patenting items. I’ve worked on engineering teams where the goal was to patent items. It does provide value and some protection from the competition. Other times you are just better off being the first to market, or keeping it as a trade secret. Either way it is something you need to think about and something I’ll be exploring in this post.

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Weighing the Pros and Cons and Exploring the Strategic Value of Patents for Your Innovations

The Barf Bag: An Everyday Invention with a Patent

The year was 1949 and Gilmore T. Schjeldahl has a great idea for a plastic lined air sickness bag. Something that would help countless air travelers in the years to come. We don’t know why Gilmore decided to patent this invention but he did. This protected his idea and to more success and sales for himself and his company.

Consider your own barf bag. Not literally but what common items in your products could you patent? Do you have a specific process for doing something? When you go down the path of patenting you open your self up for more revenue streams and more business. More to come on that.

Advantages of Securing a Patent

The patent process is a long and somewhat painful one. Why would you consider that over just going to market with your product? Consider

Exclusive Rights: A patent grants the inventor exclusive rights to the invention, preventing competitors from making, using, or selling it without permission.
- Yes, you will have to protect it and key an eye on competitors but you also have the market on lock down to start.
- This will help with up front R&D costs as you will be able to recoup more of those costs before the competition can come to market.
Revenue Opportunities: Patents can open up revenue streams through licensing or selling the patented invention.
- Maybe you are ok with others selling your product for a small fee. Sure you may not make as much on each sell but you just increased your sales force with our increasing your cost structure.
Competitive Advantage: Holding a patent can enhance a company’s credibility and attractiveness to investors.
- We like to know the companies that we are working with are legit. Having secured a patent proves that you can initiate an idea and bring it to fruition. The validation from the patent office shows there is value in the product.
- Consider this could also be a process or a way of using something.

There is for sure an advantage in not engaging in the process of patenting a product and just getting it to market. Maybe you spend more on marketing and really just trying to lock down the market quickly. Just keep in mind, someone will always be willing to do it cheaper, so a patent will prevent that.

Considerations Before Patenting

We have already touched on a few of these, but there are reasons to not patent and some of those considerations include:

Cost and Time: The patent process can be expensive and lengthy, often taking years and requiring significant financial investment.
- Consider the trade off of being the first to market and letting others “knock” off your product with the protection a patent will provide.
- A little side note here if you are making anything in China a patent is pretty close to meaningless.
Public Disclosure: Applying for a patent requires full public disclosure of the invention, which could be leveraged by competitors once the patent expires.
- Again, sometimes a trade secret is a better path because it keeps things under wraps.
- Also keep in mind this is true for everyone. I’ve worked with teams that reviewed other patents and engineered ways around them. Could be beneficial, could be harmful. Haha
Enforcement Challenges: Holding a patent does not automatically prevent others from infringing; enforcing rights can lead to costly legal battles.
- Sometimes it is worth the fight and other times it is not. So just keep in mind that physically having the patent is fine, but it does not stop anyone from copying you and testing your willingness to fight.

Patents can be beneficial, just understand what you are getting yourself into when you look to go down the path of patenting. It is a great way to protect your work and help with the recovery of R&D costs. But you have to be on the lookout for potential challenges all along the way.

Actions Step

What are 5 things that are unique to your business. Products or processes? Is there anything that is work patenting? Could you sell it to another business or a customers? What about licensing the process or product?

Schedule 3 mins this week to review these questions and determine if there is a patent in your future.

Side note Google has a good resource to search patents.

patents.google.com

Consult a patent attorney as well, but that is a good place to start.

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