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IP Strategy for Entrepreneurs: When to Patent, Trademark & Protect Your Product · Pitch to Product

• William: patent litigation is sometimes referred to as the sport of kings. They are company killers. You can think of patents as business to business warfare. You know, I'm I'm basically an arms dealer. I'm selling people weapons they can use against another business. Steve Alex Podcast: Welcome back to another episode of the Pitch to Product Podcast. I'm your host, Jack Dalton, Business Development Manager at 52 Launch. And today we're going to be discussing intellectual property strategies from day one of a new venture through the growth into a medium to large size company. To do that, I'm joined by William Childs of Childs Patent Law. I'll let you introduce yourself. But thank you for being here. It's a pleasure to have you on and we're excited to learn from your experience and expertise. William: Great, thank you. So my name is Dr. William Childs. I have a PhD in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I have a JD in law from the college from the Chicago-Kent College of Law. I've been practicing about 17 years exclusively in intellectual property law. I've been running my own firm, Child's Patent Law, which serves clients around the world from Houston, Texas. and that's been going on for about ten years. So this is basically my ten year anniversary. Steve Alex Podcast: Wow, congratulations. That's William: Thank you. Steve Alex Podcast: phenomenal. Yeah, we we at 52 launch definitely appreciate the chance to work with firms like yours, you know, where when I make an introduction or with a clo a client of ours to you, I know they're actually going to be working with you rather than, you know, a lot of big firms they're gonna get handed off to second-year associate. So it's I always feel very confident sending clients your way. And we've gotten excellent feedback from the people that have worked with you. And obviously, if you go and check out Child's Patent Law on Google, phenomenal reviews, great testimonials. So thank you again for being here. Let's get right into it. Again, we're going to cover how IP strategies evolve with a company's growth and what they look like at those different stages. So I think it's it's fair to start off with a pre-revenue. Free product entrepreneur that is determined to go to market but hasn't gotten there yet. So let's say, you know, they're in 52 launches process. They're getting close to finishing their final design for their product, but and they have an LLC set up, but they don't have any intellectual property to their name or to their company's name. So let's say they don't even know if their product can be patented or not. What would your first steps be? What would you advise them as kind of a minimum viable intellectual property strategy? William: Okay. So if they're if they if they have no idea at all, they haven't looked at it, the first thing they should do is Google their proposed product. I mean you don't want to reinvent the wheel. You don't get paid to reinvent the wheel. You know, it's it's bad to go out and find something on Amazon or TMU where somebody's basically been selling what you want to do forever. Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: if once you get past that and you satisfied yourself, maybe then you want to invest in a fuller patentability search. So what we would typically do is they would contact someone like myself, we would enter into an attorney-client relationship where they get full attorney client privilege, and then they would tell me about their product or service, whatever they're planning on offering, and we would send that under non-disclosure agreement to a professional third party searcher. Because the goal for patentability is it has to be novel and non-obvious. Everywhere, you know, it cannot have been published or made public anywhere in the world, at any point in history, in any language. So rather than just sending it to Google or Claude or Grok or whatever, they are going to go out to professional searchers who've been doing this for a dozen years or more, and they're going to search databases that have all the scientific literature, that have all the different language filters and whatnot to try to find it. And I'll typically ask them for the closest three references they can find to keep costs low. And then we'll bring it back to the client and they can decide, does this make sense to go forward at all? I've had a couple who were like, you know, that that was kind of the gist of my idea. We can come up with some little variation of patent around it, but they've basically got it. So why don't I just go directly to market and not bother? Or maybe we can look at what's what's come out there before and try to draft patent claims that will just sort of exclude that one bit of that one piece of prior art. And and go and focus exclusively on the improvements you're making to that product. Steve Alex Podcast: Right. Certainly. So I saw on your website something called a freedom to operate search. Can you tell me a little bit about that and if that would be sort of a first step or something later? William: It it usually happens later. So when you have an actual finalized product, this might be toward the end of the process with 52 launch. When I mean you're literally getting a commercialize. Whenever you're innovating, whenever you're doing something different. You may want to protect it, but you may want to watch to make sure that nobody else has patented it first. So a freedom to operate search and analysis is typically where once again, you would tell us as about the we'd the client would come to us, we enter into the client relationship with the engagement letter and all of that. And then we they would tell me as much about the invention as possible: photographs, AutoCAD, designs, everything we can to understand it as specifically as possible. They're very fact-intensive. And then Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: we would send that under NDA to the professional third-party searcher. Now what they're doing is different because freedom to operate patent abilities throughout the world. Freedom to Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: operate is which countries you plan on commercializing in. So for 52 launch, many of your clients may be like, you know, America is the largest economy in the world. I don't need anybody else. I can make my profit right here. I only need to be free to operate in the US. Or maybe they want freedom to operate in the US, Canada, and Mexico. We can just search those countries because they're going to be looking for not any publication or commercialization, Steve Alex Podcast: Right. William: any pending any issued patent. or threatening patent application that's out there in those three countries. You know, so it might be a worldwide freedom to operate search. Some people are gonna be like, okay, well if we're good in the US, what about China? What about Australia? What about Europe? Can I sell there without getting sued? Steve Alex Podcast: Absolutely. So a patentability search or a prior art search is making sure that your idea, your invention, has never existed in any published material anywhere, whereas a freedom to operate search would be looking for any intellectual property that's currently active that would prevent you from bringing your idea to market. William: Yes. So just to put it simply, patentability is can I patent it myself? freedom to operate is can I bring it to market without getting sued for patent infringement. Steve Alex Podcast: Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, that's certainly seems worth doing if you know that there is some variation of your idea already on the market. William: Exactly. And the thing is, patent litigation is sometimes referred to as the sport of kings. They are company killers. You can think of patents as business to business warfare. You know, I'm I'm basically an arms dealer. I'm selling people weapons they can use against another business. Where if somebody tries to copy your idea and let's face it it is the fastest way to to go forward is copy you know don't come up with your own idea copy someone else's Steve Alex Podcast: Right, of course. William: and the thing is you know so I'm trying to sell them a patent application that that they can use to sue somebody else if they try to do that Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah, absolutely. plenty of 52 launch products get knocked off, you know, as soon as they kind of hit some viral trend or certain amount of sales on Amazon per month. And so, you know, we've seen that. And so that's why we always recommend that people think about IP early and often, because if you have it, it's not, it's kind of a non-issue, especially on Amazon where even a trademark can get copycats taken down almost immediately and quite cheaply. But if you don't have it, you're in a hole. It's William: You you really are. You you have no options. So I'll give you Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: an example. I've talked to some people, especially in the startup community, who are like, well, you know, patents are really expensive. I don't have the money for patent litigation. What happens if, you know, some big company comes along and knocks me off? I'm like, but here's what I've seen happen is and I've seen this from the other side of it, where you get a cease and assist letter. They don't just send it to you as the potential infringer, they also send it to Amazon, Timu. Eatsy, Walmart, Target, you know, Whole Foods, they get you taken off every shelf they can find. And I mean, Steve Alex Podcast: Right. William: not only are they suing you for patent infringement, which can, you know, the damages for that can easily run into the millions. But they can also, they've gotten you, they've they've reduced your sales margins to nothing. And the thing is, many times when you're selling with like a Walmart, there's an agreement in there that says, if they can't sell your product, you agree to buy that product back. Steve Alex Podcast: Right. William: Which means now you're stuck with a warehouse full of inventory, you really can't move except out of the back of the trunk of your car. Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah, that is that's a scary thought, especially, you know, you thought you've made it, you're in Walmart, and then you're kind of back to square one. But it is cool that the kind of marketplaces are interested in protecting the people that have intellectual property and excluding the ones that William: Well. Steve Alex Podcast: don't. William: And like we saying, if you don't have a patent application out there, what I've seen happen is somebody comes up with a great idea and they get knocked off by so many competitors that I mean the competitors just get more bold, right? Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: They they start knocking off the product, then they start knocking off your packaging and your name. You know, your name is Exxon, well, theirs is Nexon. You know, the your package is I don't know, purple and gray. Well, their package is purple and gray, but with Different shapes, but I mean they literally are aiming for. If you've probably seen this on Amazon, other people bought, other people looked at, you know, right there Steve Alex Podcast: yeah. absolutely. William: on the shelf, right there beside it, compare this to, and they'll actually put it on the box. You know, why would you pay more for this? Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah, it's I mean it's easy William: Yeah. Steve Alex Podcast: to do and if if there's nothing to stop you I'm William: Exactly. Steve Alex Podcast: not gonna say why wouldn't you because I can think of plenty of reasons not to rip off other people's products but William: I I have seen businesses, and this is unfortunate, but I've seen businesses where they didn't have any patent protection at all. And I mean they went from making millions of dollars, you know, in in Houston and having a whole line of employees making this product to basically facing bankruptcy because they couldn't protect it. Like when we were preparing for the trial. Going after them for trademark infringement, which is basically all they had since they didn't have a patent. They I mean I I noticed that I point pointed out there were 16 competitors in the market, and none of them had copied our packaging. And I stopped at 16 because how many more did I want to look up? You're on the out you're billing by the hour. But I mean, that's Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: how many people. If you have a successful idea, everybody's gonna copy you. Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. And so that's, I guess, a good segue into trademarks. And generally we think of trademarks as as almost mandatory, whereas patents are a great to have, but not required to go to market. Maybe you're you get one just after you've gone to market and prove to yourself that your idea can sell. But William: Mm-hmm. Steve Alex Podcast: yeah, yeah, talk me through early stage company trademark strategy. William: I'm gonna compare this a bit to patents. So patents are very unforgiving. You have to file a patent application before you publish it, before you sell it, right? Otherwise, you can lose your pat your IP rights around the world to protect an invention. Trademarks are the opposite. You can file a trademark after you start selling it. So if you have an idea, let's say let's say 52 launch, you've got this great service you want and you want to call it that. It's like, okay, you can actually say, well, is there really a need in the market for this? There are lots of prototypers out there, there are lots of marketing agencies. Is this really gonna sell? So if you're starting this up, you can start selling their product, start selling your service, make sure it's gonna work and people are gonna buy it, and then protect your trademark. And the thing is, if you need to to rebrand, not a big deal. because you what is your early stage? And then you can start going for a name that really pops. So there are basically two ways you can file a trademark application. One is you can file what we call post-use, which is where you've actually started commercializing it. And what you Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: can do here to help yourself, take a photograph of your logo, take a photograph of your word marks like Microsoft or McDonald's, take a take a photograph of your slogans, of your packaging. And take a photograph of your first receipt. A lot of people save that first dollar, first dollar I ever made. That's great. Take a couple photographs of you with the the pizza box, you with 52 launch, you with pitch to product podcast, but just take a couple photographs. Everybody has a camera on their cell phone and note the date because that is your date of first use with that mark. And that's the date the Steve Alex Podcast: Yes. William: protection starts from. The other side is suppose you come up with a trademark name that I mean just pops. It practically sells itself. Under Armour. Victoria's Secret. The Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: Snuggie. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like the would that would Blanky with arms have really sold? But the Snuggy. You know what I mean? Like Steve Alex Podcast: I forgot that. William: sometimes you have a name, you're like, man, that liquid death for bottled water. Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: I mean the name sells the Hell's Angels, which by the way is trademarked. Steve Alex Podcast: Really. William: yes, it is. And they've actually sued other motorcycle chapters for using it. So it's actually like that name pops, it sells. And it's like, well, before you sell something with that and give other because why not go ahead and just protect it in advance? And that's what a larger company will do is if you know this is the name for you and you know this you're gonna use this and you believe it really pops. Go ahead and protect in advance. We can file intent to use and say, we have a bona fide intent to use this within the next six months. And go ahead, Steve Alex Podcast: Gotcha. William: yeah, protect it in advance. what we need if somebody's gonna approach us for a trademark or a logo, we need the exact mark, right? So for a good example, Microsoft two words is different from Microsoft one word. You know, hotels versus hotels.com. Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: You know, the US PTO, US Patent and Trademark Office thinks of those as different marks. If you're gonna have a logo, let's say your logo here in the background with the the lights, you it has to be exact. You can't make any changes once you file it. So you wanna make sure your log your logo, your slogan, your word mark, the Facebook versus Facebook. It's different. Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. Yeah, drop the duh. William: Yeah, but I mean it it is it is considered different a different mark. So you want to make sure you have it as finalized as possible before you approach this and also helps to know what you're planning on selling. So for for my industry it would be legal services. For yours, Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: it would be, you know, marketing, sales, manufacturing, prototyping, you know, consulting. For others, it might be oil and gas or shampoo. You have to know because you protect trademarks based on not just the name of the mark, but what industry it's used in. So I guess I could call myself the Under Armour Law Firm and be fine because I'm offering legal services, not clothing. You know, most people are Steve Alex Podcast: Right. So that William: not gonna confuse those. But if you tried to go anywhere near apparel or shoes with under armor, they would bury you. Steve Alex Podcast: Right, right. Yes, likelihood of confusion. a William: Well. Steve Alex Podcast: a question we get sort of often that I am not sure how to answer is if you wanted to protect a logo, is there any benefit to doing that in black and white as opposed to your specific brand colors? William: we inher we unless the client indicates otherwise, we always go after a black and white drawing at the US PTO because and say we don't this isn't limited to any particular color. Color schemes change all the time. So you might have like Pepsi the Pepsi logo is is already red, white, and blue, but you might make Mountain Dew red, white, and blue just for shirts at, you know, the two thousand at July fourth or the World Cup or whatever for our teams. But I mean you don't want it to be limited to colors or textures, like is it solid black or is it like a a textured black? Same thing when we talk about a word mark. It's without respect to the size of the words, like the font, without respect Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: to like italics or the style of it. It's like Microsoft, Steve Alex Podcast: Right. William: however, whatever font you use, we don't care. Whatever, you know, italics or whatever, we get Microsoft the whole thing, the whole word. Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Certainly I can't think of many reasons why you would not trademark a logo in black and white. There are companies that have trademarked certain colors though, right? William: Now you can do that. If if a color gets to be so associated with you, and I'll give you example of this, was the let me see, this is the the insulation by Corning with the Pink Panther. So they Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: started arbitrarily coloring their insulation pink. And of course, they had the Pink Panther theme on their commercials and stuff like that. And they're like, look, nobody else can offer insulation in housing, you know, can offer insulation using pink. That's our color. We've used it so much that it's that it's our color. another one is Magneto for who is this? it's one of the phone carriers. I forget. Steve Alex Podcast: T Mobile? William: T Mobile. T Mobile has Magneto days and they hand out like Magneto shirts and Magneto mugs and stuff like that. Like they're like, that's our color now. Like nobody else can offer mobile services using Magneto. You have to pick a different color. Steve Alex Podcast: Cool. And so yeah, that's a that's very cool actually. But you would have to be a bigger brand to do that, right? You would have to have some sort of acquired distinctness. William: it's usel well, first of all, in order for those things to work, it has to be arbitrary. So yeah, like if you just ha if you were selling shirts like like Victoria's Secret or something, you can't trademark pink. That's considered functional. But if it's something where it's compl you know, like, or same thing with cars, but if it's something where it's completely arbitrary, where it's like, Steve Alex Podcast: Okay. I see. William: okay, there's no reason they had to make their cell phones pink or their Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: commercials pink. That that was something we did. There's nothing there's Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: nothing functional about pink in corning installation that you needed. Steve Alex Podcast: Gotcha. Very cool. So I think we covered most of the early stage stuff. If you have any notes on copyrights, we haven't really covered that at all in any previous episodes. So William: What I typically tell people for copyright is, and this goes back to the camera thing, take a photograph of it. So if you have something that you don't want people copying, just put there's usually a standard phrase at the bottom of the thing, at the bottom of, let's say, of your web page or the bottom of your your Word document or something Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: like that, you know, copyright 2026, all rights reserved. That's all you really need to do. Because the thing about copyright is it's even more forgiving than trademarks. So in order to sue someone with a patent, you have to have an issued patent. In order to sue someone with trademarks, you have to have used it in commerce to sue somebody for trademark infringement. But really, practically, you often need to have it federally registered first. It's Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: like the difference between a gun permit and a hunting license. You know, one is this is you Steve Alex Podcast: Gotcha. William: know, having a US, a registered US trademark appli having a US registered trademark is kind of like James Bond with a license to kill. You now have, you know, the ability to go after anybody anywhere in the US for using a confusingly similar mark. With copyrights, Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: you can literally copyright it on the way to the courthouse. So you can take it to a copyright attorney, say, they're copying, you know, they're copying my book, and and go to a copyright litigator and they can file a copyright on the on the way to the courthouse if they need to. It's that fast. Steve Alex Podcast: Interesting. William: Not easy. So for that reason, many of us don't do a lot with copyrights because there's just not a lot of money in it. Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: and you know, usually there are the larger shops that handle it on a high throughput basis. They just basically, you know, f take a photograph and just sort of automatically upload it to the Library of Congress and you're done. Steve Alex Podcast: Gotcha. Cool. That was that was new information for me. So awesome. All right. Well, I think we covered a lot of the early stage stuff. I'm curious to know if your suggestions and strategy would change if, say, somebody went through 52 launches accelerator five years ago, their first flagship product was a success, they're now selling a million units a year, and they've got products two, three, and four in development. Would their Patent and maybe even trademark strategy be different for those follow-up products now that they've got more money in the bank, healthy cash flow. William: I think so. So I'll give you an example. For the trademarks, do you want when you come up with a new product, do you want it to be a new name? You know, the the the Toyota Corolla versus the Toyota Camry versus the Toyota Avalon. You know, if you want to sell at a different price, you might need a different name. Or or you can Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: go with something like, you know, the iPhone 1, 2, or whatever we're up to now, 17 maybe? You know, but it's like you you want to have some PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5. How do you want to teach? Teach your audience that the that your your product is is new and improved. I'll Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: see things like Tide, the detergent, and they're like, it's always new and improved. Has it ever not been new and improved? You know, so They'll put on something like that, but I don't really know if that means anything. But when you say like the iPhone fifteen versus the sixteen, you're saying there's a significant difference here. One that may warrant a price increase or may warrant the lower cost. Maybe you're providing a less expensive option, you know. Like I said, the the Toyota Corolla, I believe, is more is meant to be the lower cost car. You know, the Camry is sort of your middle of the road, and the Avalon is supposed to be your high-end car. And then from what understand Toyota makes Lexus when they wanted to go to the real premium models they actually launched Steve Alex Podcast: Yep. William: a different brand the Lexus cars Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: because people were like no one's gonna pay you know a hundred thousand dollars for a Toyota right so it's like, well, come out with a Lexus, I'm a premium brand. So that's something you want to think about is what is your you need to start developing a brand strategy. Like you can develop a a trademark family. the McDonald's has the McRib, the the Big Mac, the McFries, the McNuggets, but it's that little Mick thing there. Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: Or you could come up with something like you know, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word, you start you start putting the trademarks together. So they actually would have trademarked Microsoft and then have trademarked Word by itself and then the two together. But that's something to start thinking about is what is your overall brand strategy going forward? and one of the ways I tell people to think about trademarks and protecting them is if you talk to marketing people and you work in marketing, so you know this. They will talk about investing $5,000 per month in marketing like it's nothing. It's a drop in the market. It's a drop in the Steve Alex Podcast: yeah. Yeah. William: bucket. It's especially if you're trying to educate people about a new product. Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: I mean, that's when it gets really expensive. So before you start investing $5,000 in your trademark, make sure you own it. Otherwise, it's like Steve Alex Podcast: Yes. William: building a hotel on somebody else's land. Steve Alex Podcast: I could not agree more. William: So before people come to us with a trademark, like a word mark, my my suggestion is search it. So Google your mark, whatever it is, in your area. So it might be 52 launch marketing, 52 launch prototyping, Microsoft computing programs. But like Google it. If you can't find any competition, that sounds like a reasonable mark. You're not you're gonna run Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: into a lot less trouble. If you run into a wall of stuff, and it's like, okay, well, this is probably not gonna be your best bet, you're gonna get and if it's in the same area, like I was saying before, it's in the same area of goods and services, you're gonna the patent office is probably gonna is going to reject your application and on that basis. So the same thing for inventions. What you're doing is you've established a pipeline of revenue, you wanna protect it. So you might have your one point product. Well then you can protect, you can patent your two point the improvements to it if desired, and then your three point your four point If you think about a business like Halliburton, th they drill for oil, right? Or Exxon. Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: They just keep coming up with improvements on how to better drill for oil, how to better refine the oil, how to better process the oil. And the same thing for a Microsoft or a Google. They're they've been in the same business for decades. They just keep patenting their improvements. So a Hewlett-Packard might file 10,000 patents a year. They just keep refining their products. And the thing is, you're and this is something consider with patents. You don't want to burn your own pipeline. So I've seen clients or people out in the innovative area, what they'll do is try is especially this happens a lot from academia. In academia, Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: it's all about publishing, it's all about showing people how smart you are, how important your work is, trying to trying to attract that funding. Steve Alex Podcast: Exactly. William: It's the opposite in the private sector. So What they'll do in academia is you come up with an you come up with an idea and you publish it and you start talking about it could be used for this, it could be used for that. It's so awesome. It slices, it dices, it cures cancer, it removes stains, it helps with AI, you know, it does everything. And it's like what you're doing, if the examiner finds that reference, is you're rendering everything else you do obvious. Look how obvious it was. This guy published it 10 years ago. Even if he's citing it against you. So, with when you're filing a patent application, you only want to really patent protect what you can bring to market within the next year and a half. Because that's how long it stays confidential. And then you leapfrog. So it's like if if you within the next year and a half. If you have more innovations, they go into the next patent application and then the next one. And you keep leapfrogging because let's say by application two or three, the closest prior art is going to be your own published application. Steve Alex Podcast: Right. William: And I mean, and that's how it was when I worked for companies like Halliburton or like B I S-F-S-E chemical company. Every time we'd file a patent application, it was all our own publications, our own patent publications, our own academic publications being cited against us. So when you file your patent application, you want to say, here is the invention. It can be used for this. That's it. No other suggestions in it. That way Steve Alex Podcast: Right. William: then you're not rendering obvious your future development. So yeah. Steve Alex Podcast: Huh. Yeah, that's a that's an a strategy or a a way of thinking about it that I haven't heard before, but it makes perfect sense. And in fact, my last role was at a company that's building some communications satellite architecture in low Earth orbit. And there was never any discussion of of patenting the network architecture or the the buses they're gonna use. And What you just said makes perfect sense because their service start date isn't until twenty thirty. So of course they wouldn't want to be, you know, putting that information out there now because one of the giant space companies would just say, this is a pretty good idea. What why don't we do something like William: Yeah. Steve Alex Podcast: that? William: So when you file a patent application, depending on how you file it, you can get up to about 18 months of confidentiality. So let's say you file a provisional patent application, you Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: get up to a year to before you file your non-provisional. That's confidential. And then you get up to another six months before your non-provisional is published. Right? So you can you can keep it confidential during that time. And that's why I was mentioning this 18-month rolling window where it's like, how much can you protect within this 18 months and realistically bring to market? because that's your head start. Even though I've protected it, you know, confidentiality protects it pretty well too, if you're not selling it. I'll give you an example of where this really comes into play, and that is something like pharmaceuticals or medical devices. You can't go directly to market, you have to get FDA approval. Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: So another area might be if you want to sell in Europe, you have to get like ISO and all that compliance before you start selling it. So those clients are often not interested in a in a in getting a fast patent application granted. Because what they want to do is get that 18 months of confidentiality and to give them a head start on their competition. Because as soon as it publishes, their competition's gonna say, they've protected that. I wonder if we could sh come up with a a different related set of molecules that might also have anti-cancer properties, Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: you know, or something like that. You know, so why put that out there? Another possibility if you want, and this is sneaky if you only want to do if you only want to protect something in the US, you can file a US patent application and request that they not publish it until it's patented. So that means if you don't get a patent on it, they don't publish it. It you can keep it a trade secret. You can you can think of this as hedging your bets. Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. So is that a strategy that's available to everyone or is that kind of a constraint to larger corporations? William: Well no no y anyone can do that. It's just literally it's a box we check when we file our Steve Alex Podcast: really? William: we file your non provisional patent application. Please don't publish this. But like I said, the cost is you can never file in another country. So it's it's US only. But that's something that somebody I sometimes the software crowd, they're really, they're really how shall I put it, they're concerned they won't get the protect the scope of protection they want, right? So what we can do, for example, is I can file a prioritized patent application at the US patent office and typically get it examined and even allowed within about two to three months because you're filing it prioritized. Steve Alex Podcast: Okay. William: And that's before it would publish. And then I can take the what you know the the claims, hopefully that we've gotten allowed or that we're in the process of getting allowed back to the client and say, let's talk about this this scope of protection. Is it broad enough where you think it's worth disclosing? Or do you want to just maintain it as a trade secret? If they say trade secret, abandon the application, it never publishes. Right? if they Steve Alex Podcast: That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's it. William: like if they like it. Continue with the application and you get the exclusive right to make, use, and sell it within the, you know, within the various countries for 20 years is the default. Steve Alex Podcast: Right. Yeah, that's a that's an advanced strategy. That's cool. William: It it we I we come up with all these strategies for doing this stuff. Like one of the things my clients will do is they wanna protect in the they wanna protect in multiple countries. So let's say we'll file in the US and try to get it allowed in the US quickly. I call this a trailblazer strategy because from let's say when you file a a provisional, you have about 30 months till you and you listen up. Okay, back up. You file a provisional, then you file your PCT, then you have to file your national stage applications in other countries within 30 months, roughly. So the reason why I mentioned this is In order to protect your invention in the US, you need a US patent, right? You don't need any other patent to protect it in the US. You've you've got the US locked down. But what about Mexico? Or as I think about it here in Texas, four hours that way? Or what about Canada? You need a Mexican patent to protect Mexico, a Canadian patent to protect Canada. We can we can we help our clients file in Europe, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, you know, Mexico or or ever. Wouldn't it be great before you do that though? It it's not a done deal. When you file in these other countries, you have to persuade those countries your idea is patentable, right? That your claims are patentable. If we have the US patent allowed early. We you know you have a winner, something worth investing in, and you now have a pretty good idea of the claims that are allowable. You can take those claims, hand them to your patent attorneys in France, and say, This is what worked in the US. The US said this is patentable. Don't you, you know, let's send this to the examiner and see if the European examiner will agree they're patentable. There are variations, it's not a done deal, but it's a heck of a long way and it can save you a lot of money. So that's something we do. Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah, absolutely. William: Go ahead. Steve Alex Podcast: no, that that makes perfect sense. William: Yeah. So that's something we do is we help clients protect their invention in the US and we can help liaise with law firms around the world to help you protect your invention around the world. and you know Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah, there are markets other than the United States. William: Yes. So like it especially or if you just want to knock off somebody else. And I'll give you example, Taiwan. You wanna you you're like, well, I I just wanna lock down the US, but I don't need them. you know, making this thing in in Taiwan or China and knocking it off cheaply and then shipping it all over the world and it kind of makes its way across the US border and you start playing whack-a-mole. Right? Steve Alex Podcast: Yeah. William: So maybe what you do is you file a patent application and one in Taiwan and one in China, to the extent people believe they're different, and try to protect and try to lock down. They are not allowed to make your product in their country. You know, and is it gonna be easy to enforce? No. But at the same time, if you don't have a patent, you have no chance. Steve Alex Podcast: Right. Cool. That we covered all I wanted and more. So anything William: Yeah. Steve Alex Podcast: else you think is is important to cover before we we wrap this up? William: One of the questions I get a lot is when should you file a patent application? And to Steve Alex Podcast: yeah. William: me, there's a range, right? At the earliest date you'd want to file a patent application is when you can tell someone how to make and use the invention. This is the trade you make with the patent office. In exchange for you telling the public how to make and use your invention, the USPTO would grant you the exclusive right to make you sell an offer for sale and import your invention into the US, for example. Steve Alex Podcast: It's good deal. William: So literally what they want is a recipe. How would you make it? How would you do it? It can be I've made it like this and therefore you proved you made it. Or these are the steps I would perform if I had the time, the money, the resources. For example, if you came up with an improved nuclear trigger. not very easy to to make, right? You know, it's just like they don't want you making nuclear bombs in your house. Or if you came up Steve Alex Podcast: Right. William: with an improv a new a new improvement to a satellite, okay, well they're expensive, right? You may not have done this, but if you know how to tell somebody how to do it, the recipe, that's the first part of the window, right? The last part of the window, the latest you'd want to patent it, is before you publish it or you sell it. Right? And the reason for that is it creates the bar against patentability. So that's the latest you'd want to wait. Steve Alex Podcast: Right. And that's kind of the same spectrum of academia to a deep tech startup in stealth mode. William: Yeah. So now there's a there's a middle point that I call the entrepreneur's point. This is when it's your money on the line. Right? Steve Alex Podcast: Mm-hmm. William: This is where you set you not only have you perhaps made it or you could tell somebody how to make it, but you've proven it to yourself that this would work. Steve Alex Podcast: if you're still watching, thank you for for enjoying another episode of the Pitch the Product Podcast. It's thank you to all of our viewers of as always. And can find William at childspattentlaw.com. Could not possibly recommend speaking with him more. You can find us at fifty twolaunch.com. We've both got confidential initial conf consultations, William even more so than ours. So if you got an idea, please please talk to us instead of talking to your free version of Chat GPT because yeah, just just don't do that.