{"id":19770,"date":"2015-12-14T09:22:51","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T13:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devwp.davison.com\/blog\/?p=19770"},"modified":"2019-01-10T11:57:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T16:57:36","slug":"are-patents-that-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davison.com\/blog\/are-patents-that-important\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Patents That Important?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Patents\"<\/p>\n

As the holiday season is upon us, we can\u2019t help but think of all the innovative and creative minds that are behind those products that are flying off the store shelves as people continue to cross items off of their holiday wish lists.<\/p>\n

So often, inventors with big ideas get hung up on the need for patents before a project even goes from ideation to a working concept model for testing.<\/p>\n

Sure, in a blog that we wrote a few weeks ago, we put the spotlight on\u00a0Lowell Wood, an inventor who surpassed Thomas Edison as America\u2019s leading patent holder with 1,085 patents to his name.<\/p>\n

Despite that amazing fact, today, we are going to discuss the topic of why some say it\u2019s not always important to aspire to be a patent holder and to rather, aspire to see ideas in the marketplace!<\/p>\n

Every year, hundreds of thousands of patented ideas never make it to the market. As we mentioned before, sometimes people get too caught up in \u201cprotecting\u201d their idea, more than they are concerned with developing their idea.<\/p>\n

Fear is often the motivator for people to jump right in to patenting their idea before it\u2019s ready for that step. As we always say, invention ideas change over time; an initial product idea can have multiple iterations before its design is finalized.<\/p>\n

Now, we aren\u2019t discounting the value of a patent; after all, it is an important tool. But according to Tamara Monosoff, established author and contributing writer to Entrepreneur Magazine<\/em>, it\u2019s not the fast pass to success. Monosoff suggests that steps should be taken to validate your product and its potential success before a patent is filed.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why she finds it important for a person, before he or she even considers patenting an idea, to ask themselves important questions regarding their invention idea. These questions may include:<\/p>\n