republicrat1776 asked:

someone from copying a unique type of service…e.g., a business offering an innovative form of local advertising?

Is “pure competition” the only weapon from the very outset? What if someone with more resources immediately starts copying my idea before I can develop a competitive position?

Question posted courtesy of: Advertiser Blog



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Time:
Monday, March 20th, 2006 at 5:16 am
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Small Business
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3 Responses to “Patents protect physical inventions and intellectual property laws protect writings, but what would keep.”

  1. Davyd S Says:
    March 23rd, 2006 at 9:09 am

    There are two problems here. One is entrepreneur paranoia, the other is it doesn’t mean someone won’t steal your idea.

    The fact is,it is very hard to protect a service. Imagine the first guy who thought that people would pay him to cut lawns and wanted everyone else who entered the market to pay him a royalty. Would that make sense. Some things are not very protectable.

    On the other hand, if you have something unique and you would like no one else to do it, you need to find a process inside it you can protect.

    Being first to market can be enough,at least for awhile. if it is a really good idea and it takes off, you need to find investors and grow rapidly before someone else can catch up. this means giving up some of you company to these investors, but it helps you maintain a lead in the market and be the “Kleenex” of your chosen category.

    But don’t be too surprised if people don’t steal you idea, there is always the risk that they don’t believe it is as good as you do, it isn’t, they are not a smart as you or they are not as diligent as you to get it off the ground.

    Hell, legend has it the Apple computer guys offered their computer to IBM who walked away from them!

    Just do your job best and you will be fine, when you succeed, you can find something to patent or just stay ahead of the crowd.

  2. cato___ Says:
    March 25th, 2006 at 7:41 pm

    Theoretically, you can get a patent on a method of advertising.

  3. Yagen P Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 7:35 am

    There is something called a business method patent. It’s a way of protecting an innovative way of doing business. There is some controversy surrounding it thought, and I believe only the US Patent Office allows business method patents.

    Take a look at There are some articles on patents there, and some of the articles touch on software patents and business method patents.

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