Your technical invention is almost ready for the market and it's time to think about patent protection. But when is the right time to apply? This step is crucial to secure your innovation.
Key message: The right time to apply for a patent must be strategically planned. On the one hand, your invention must be fully developed, on the other hand, the invention must not yet have been made public. As a rule, a good time is before you enter into initial collaborations with business partners and potential customers. In addition, financing for the nationalization phase (approx. 30 months after filing) must be secured.
The details:
1. Importance of patents
In the technology sector, a patent is an important way of legally protecting the core values of a company. The benefits of a patent are clear: with a patent in hand, you can prevent others from copying, selling or otherwise commercializing your invention. But the process of filing and maintaining a patent is expensive, and the costs increase exponentially once you enter the nationalization phase - when you file your patent in multiple countries.
2. The "right" time
As an entrepreneur, you need to consider the right time to apply for a patent. Too early and you run the risk of your invention not being fully thought through and the patent not offering you the best protection. Too late, and you could find that a competitor has beaten you to it or that unintentional pre-publication through discussions with business partners or presentations at trade fairs ruins your chances of getting a patent.
3. Criterion: Maturity of development
In this context, it is advisable to conduct a patent search (details can be found here) to determine when your invention is sufficiently new and mature compared to similar patents for a patent application to make sense. You (or your tech team) should also estimate how many additional development steps are still necessary and whether these need to be listed in the patent specification. It is often worth consulting a patent attorney for this question.
4. Criterion: Involvement of third parties
The novelty of your invention is a prerequisite for the patent to be valid. As soon as the devel-opment to be patented is made public, the possibility of obtaining patent protection expires. A presentation at a conference or disclosure to a third party without ensuring that the third party really keeps the information secret is sufficient.
Ideally, a development to be patented should therefore not be shown to anyone or only to a very select group of people before the patent application is filed. As soon as your company wants to enter into collaborations with business partners or (potential) customers, the patent application should therefore generally be filed beforehand.
5. Criterion: Financing
Nationalizing a patent is an expensive process that needs to be well planned. You must have enough capital to finance the patent applications in all target countries. This means that you must either have sufficient funds of your own or be prepared to look for investors who believe in the value and enforceability of your patent.
Therefore, it is not only a question of timing, but also of financial resources. The nationaliza-tion phase (and thus the high costs) will come approximately 30 months after the patent applica-tion. At this point in time, you will have to reckon with the financial investment, which is rough-ly CHF 5,000 to 10,000 per country.
