After developing a new business model for painting lawns with vegetable oil for drought, and also introducing nutrients to the mix, I considered patenting the formula, but was later convinced against it. Why? Costs for one, but also time to market, patents take time, and the drought here in California could be mostly over after a couple of El Niño years with lots of rain. Still, there’s another solid reason to reconsider writing it.
You see, I don’t think a patent is a good idea, it’s like; “Why write it so someone can steal it in China?” Or, someone might steal it and add or change an ingredient or two. At first, a fellow business consultant was puzzled by this decision of mine, but later she understood the relevance of my choice not to patent, she stated;
“You know, that’s a very good point that I’ve also considered in the past, to patent or not to patent, however, what happens if it’s stolen by reverse engineering your product (for example, what happens if you reverse engineer it by someone else who got a sample product that you just started marketing? If someone were to “steal” it (whether that person was in China or anywhere else in the world), then what legal recourse would you have? patent?
Yes, the right thought here indeed. Now, having a patent really only entitles you to pay lawyers a lot of money to “try” and not ensure that your rights as a patent holder are upheld. A company with a lot of cash can shoot you. Of course, if you run fast enough in the market and notice that no one else has a patent and you’ve already started, they have to catch you, not the other way around.
Fortunately, it’s harder to reverse engineer something you spray on your lawn, because you need the fluid to analyze with no residue on it. So someone has to physically steal an unused portion, since this is a service business. So, in this case, I think I feel more secure without a patent, and I’m not afraid of the competition, I am the competition, I always win. In fact, I once told a friend of mine. “Winning is the only thing I’m good at.” Still, why make it easy for a competitor to beat me by using my brain?
She noticed; “I guess I wouldn’t have much of a resource anyway if people in China were to steal it, but what about someone here in the US? Wouldn’t that mean they would have absolutely no property rights and therefore you would have no basis to sue someone who stole your product?”
Perhaps it would be wise for more entrepreneurs to understand this point? Please consider all this.