Covering Your Ass, Part 3

May 30th, 2008 Chris

So, we’ve talked about NDAs and patents – now let’s explore one of the most important aspects of the patent system to the micro business. The Provisional Patent Application is a way of protecting your invention without having to immediately go through the process and cost of drafting full patent application complete with all it’s archain features.

Drafting a Provisional Patent Application is much simpler – in fact it was specifically introduced by the US Patent and Trade Office in the 90′s to make it easier for inventors to go down the patent road. There are no specific format requirements and no need to draft specific claims (a critical feature of a full patent application). You just really need to describe your invention in detail.

Once you’ve submitted your Provisional Patent Application, your idea is protected, but only for 12 months. You have one year to file your full Patent Application after your provisional application is received. Unless you do so, you will lose your claim to the invention.

Why is this approach beneficial? For the micro business, this is very attractive. You can take your new great idea and protect it without all the cost and time of the full patent process for 12 months. In this time, you can fully explore it’s market potential: building prototypes/betas, talking to potential partners, seeking investors, etc… And you can go around citing your invention as “patent-pending”.

If, at the end of the 12 months, you determine your idea is a winner – then you can submit the full patent application and it’s effective date (the date from which your invention is protected) will be when you submitted the Provisional Patent Application.

And the good news is that you can draft your own Provisioning Patent Application. It is relatively straight forward. In fact, I just mailed off my own earlier this week. Unlike the telephone book size of many full patent applications, my provisioning application was just eight pages…

In the process, I found a couple of great resources to help:

• Patent Pending in 24 Hours. This book provides a great overview of the patent process and a step-by-step guide to drafting your Provisional Patent Application. The book also has other IP-related forms that you can use, like an NDA.
• Patent Wizard. This software walks you through drafting your provisional application. And, as a cheap bastard, you can use it for one application per month for free.
• USPTO. The U.S. Patent and Trade Office doesn’t have the best looking web site but it is packed with information that’s easy to read and doesn’t require you to be a lawyer to understand.

So – go ahead and protect your invention with a Provisional Patent Application. It’s easy and as long as you remember to file you full patent application within a year, you will be protected. Remember, your protection is based on the assumption that your patent will ultimately be granted. If it’s rejected by the patent office then you have no protection. So, someone could steal your idea and, five years later when the patent office rejects your patent, you will have no recourse.

And someone doesn’t have to steal it outright, they could change one part (often called a work around) and cite it as a different invention (read the part about alternative embodiments carefully when drafting your application). That’s one reason why I highly recommend never disclosing your invention, even with the protection of a Provisional Patent Application, unless you need to. And having an NDA is always a good idea.

Here endeth the patent stuff.

C.

Posted in Intellectual Property | No Comments »

Covering Your Ass, Part 2

May 28th, 2008 Chris

We talked about NDAs in the last post. Now let’s talk about something that can be even more effective at protecting your great ideas but is one of the most intimidating: the patent! It is true that patents are complicated. Remember I’m not a lawyer but here are a few of the things I think about…

Let’s start with what can be patented. Most people think about patenting a thing: a new widget, mouse trap, Wankel rotary engine, whatever. What some don’t realize is that you can patent a process – a sequence of actions performed by some mechanism typically involving inputs and outputs. Sound like software? You betcha! Processes that can typically be embodied in software are, typically patentable. Even manual processes like the Heimlich Manoeuvre can be patented.

Can be patented doesn’t mean can be successfully patented. There is a list of requirements including things like:

• Is it new? Obviously you can’t patent something that is already in existence (although you can improve on existing inventions). It doesn’t matter whether someone else has patented it or not – if the idea already exists then you can’t patent it.
• Do you own it? If you invent something while employed by a company, that company typically owns any invention in the field it operates in.
• Is it in the public domain? Typically, if you tell people about your idea before filing your patent application (especially if you publicize or offer it for sale), then you will have trouble getting a patent granted or at least a patent that will survive a challenge.

Practically speaking, having a patent can be a great way to dissuade competitors. If someone copies you, they run the risk of you suing them. And in most jurisdictions there is a significant penalty to be paid if they did so knowing about your patent. Is it practical in most cases to go around suing people? Usually not. Especially not for a micro business. I’ve been involved in a couple of legal actions around patents and they can get expensive ($1-2M). But usually, a credible patent is enough to brush competitors away from the plate without having to actually bean them with a lawsuit.

The first step in the patent process is to draft a patent application and submit it for review by a government patent examiner. It can take years for review which is why you often see “patent-pending”. It specifically refers to the case where the patent is filed but has yet to become a full “granted patent”. Don’t worry though, your claim to your invention will be based on the date that you submitted your application. So even if someone has copied you while your patent is being reviewed, as soon as it is granted, you can go after them for their past indiscretions. So feel free to warn potential infringers even if your submitted patent application has yet to be granted.

If you have ever read the language required for a patent patent application, they are gory (warning: shameless self-promotion). I have a fair bit of experience and I wouldn’t attempt to draft a patent without at least a lawyer’s review.

Ah – there’s the rub. For a micro business, can you really afford to spend thousands to try and patent every new idea you have? If you are like our business or are just cheap like me, you can’t.

But don’t worry – there is an easier option which I think is perfect for the micro business. It’s called the “Provisional Patent Application”. More on that next time…

C.

P. S. I generally am referring to the U.S. Patent system in these posts. It’s the biggest market for most inventions and it’s relatively straight forward to get protection for your invention in other countries thanks to the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

P. S. S. Remember – I’m not a lawyer so please don’t rely on me for legal advice. In other words, don’t even think of suing me.

P. S. S. S. In retrospect, this is a somewhat boring topic and I already regret spending this much time on it. There will be only one more post in this series, I promise. But please read it as it will be the best one ever, I promise.

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Covering Your Ass

May 27th, 2008 Chris

I have a few friends I get together with once and a while to brainstorm ideas for new businesses. We all have some pretty cool ideas, typically for new Internet or web based services. Part of starting down the road with any of these business is getting feedback and soliciting early interest from potential partners, team members, investors, etc…

Of course, one of the things that you always need to worry about is what happens if someone steals the idea. I don’t worry too much about people I know but the reality is that if you go talk with an organization about a potential partnership and you’re not properly protected, nothing stops them from taking the idea and running. And it happens.

There are a couple of key tools in the arsenal that even if you’re not a lawyer you should be familiar with. First is the Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The NDA is a great way of protecting yourself with the organization or person you’re speaking with. Once signed, an NDA typically prevents an organization or individual from disclosing or using something you tell them – on pain of damages (i.e. $’s). You can get a NDA template from your lawyer as well as a few on-line resources (more on those later).

The Mutual NDA (MNDA), the NDA’s cousin, is similar but it binds both parties to a conversation to keep it confidential, versus the NDA which is typically one way (i.e. one party keeps the other’s secret). Regardless, the NDA or MNDA will typically specify the subject to be discussed that is confidential.

Using an NDA is always good advice when trying to keep your confidential information, well, confidential. But there are some issues. First, both parties to a conversation have to agree to sign one – the same one. As soon as the lawyers get involve, then you can often encounter a “my gavel is bigger than yours…” situation where someone wants changes and the negotiations begin. In a micro business, this can get expensive fast as going to your lawyer even a couple of times adds up fast. Always try to use the template you got from your lawyer or a trusted source. You won’t be familiar with the other party’s. Also, unless it’s really obvious and risk-free, get any proposed changes reviewed.

The other issue with an NDA is that it’s often tough to stop information from spreading beyond the two parties. I’ve seen a fair bit of confidential information get passed around after a few beers and, like the genie, once it’s out, it’s tough to get back in. If someone ends up with the information third or fourth hand, it becomes very hard to be able to pin the leak on anyone. Especially if you’ve discussed it with a number of people or organizations. So only disclose what you need to move a conversation forward and look to other methods to protect your ideas (see below).

What if someone wants you to sign an NDA to protect their idea? My advice is to start by saying no. First, unless you’re pretty experienced, you’ll want a lawyer to look at it (ca-ching) and then as you’ll be taking on a legal obligation before you even know much about it.

I almost always refuse to sign an NDA for an initial meeting. I want to have a phone call, meeting, etc… to learn as much as I can, before making any legal commitments. More often than not, it turns out to be something I’m not interested in and don’t need to expose myself and the company to any potential legal liability.

So – got a great idea and want pitch it to a partner or investor? Think about getting an NDA in place first. Someone wants to pitch you an idea – get the “non-NDA” version first before worrying about going legal.

Colleen always tells me that I’m still too corporate for the micro business world. Probably true. But when it comes to protecting your idea, ask yourself if you can live with it being out there in the public domain. If you can’t – consider the NDA.

Stay tuned for the second tool in your CYA arsenal – the patent. I doesn’t have to be nearly as scary as it sounds and can be even more effective than an NDA in protecting your valuable ideas.

C.

Posted in Intellectual Property | 1 Comment »

Insourcing Fav’s

May 23rd, 2008 Chris

Despite my blog posting comment thing being broken, I did get quite a few comments emailed directly to me on my post yesterday on the 4 Hour Work week. I thought I’d hit the topic again, but geek out on you a bit.

If you recall – I’m a big believer in having tight control over stuff that goes to the customer. And I’m cheap. We have several pieces of technology that we use in the office that have allowed us to bring work back into the company from an outsourcer and in the process be more responsive to the customer. Oh yeah, and save money.

Colleen records a fair number of web classes and teleconferences. Customers receive copies of these on CD. We used to send out master copies to a disk duplicator service – one of those firms that will basically reproduce disks and print labels on them. Typically our quantities for duplication range from 10 – 200.

For smaller runs (that disk duplicating services won’t do), Casey in our office would have to sit there and manually copy and label each CD. Painful!

For larger runs, we had to send them out. It wasn’t that inconvenient but usually took a few days and cost ~$2 per disk. Not too expensive, but it added up over the year…

To make a long story short, we went looking at CD/DVD duplicators and came across a unit perfect for our needs. From Primera (and OEM’ed by Imation), it replicates CDs and DVDs, and ink-jet print the labels – all in batches of 20. They had larger machines (ie. could handle more disks) but at a substantial premium.

So for $1,500 (maybe less now), we purchased a unit. Now we crank out CD/DVD runs quickly – we just update the label, pop in the master disc, hit “Go” and go do something useful. It’s been working smoothly for almost a year now.

Now customers get their disks days sooner, we save a lot of time and it’s already paid for itself.

The moral of the story: for a microbusiness outsourcing is often not the answer. There are tools that allow you to do it in-house, reducing costs while providing better service to the customer.

We have several other pieces of technology that we’ve used to do likewise. More on those later…

C.

Posted in Outsourcing, Productivity | 1 Comment »

It’s Not Scottish…

May 22nd, 2008 Chris

This will sound completely contrarian but I think the whole “4 hour work week”, “outsource everything you can” is crap. In short: if you’re not working your butt off – what are you doing?!

I’m not completely a outsourcing luddite – I do believe that certain business essentials need to be outsourced for one of two reasons:

1. Skill sets. I am not an accountant, a lawyer or a graphics designer. Those are all tasks that we outsource. Even if I wanted to do those things – I can’t. So we pay people to do that work.

2. Opportunity cost. This is the one where Tim Ferriss and I really deviate. I am incredibly picky and given my druthers, would have my hands on every piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately, there are only some many hours in the day and something has to go…

What do I mean “something has to go…”? That means, unless I’m willing to hire another person that I can micro manage, it has to be outsourced because I’m not ready to work more than 60 hours a week (I have in the past but I’d really like to have some modicum of non-work stuff in my life). So it means prioritizing what effort is done in house and outsourcing the stuff that has less risk of impacting the customer.

For example, I am really picky about how customer facing stuff looks. I wasn’t happy with some of the way stuff on our web looked so I undertook to update it. I knew enough to get done what we wanted so I brought it in house. On the other hand, while we could print out and collate 200 copies of a work book for one of Colleen’s clients, we don’t have time – so off to the printer it goes.

Think I’m crazy? Do you know the CEO of Starbucks has been known to pick the size of font on store signs and the color of cups? This is the guy that built and runs a bazillion dollar empire. He could outsource it or delegate it (an option in a non-micro biz) but he doesn’t. Finding the time to personally ensure a positive customer experience pays.

So, if you only want to work four hours a week, I think Tim Ferriss has a good plan. But I also assume you don’t care if your business grows – otherwise, you’d use those other 56 hours. There is always more to be done.

Otherwise, perhaps its time for a gut-check: are you really passionate about your business?

C.

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

I Give Up!

May 20th, 2008 Chris

Over the weekend, I noted that Microsoft has re-tabled an offer for the Search Engine part of Yahoo – the piece that they really need to try to catch up to Google (fat chance). Its a very lucrative business – which I can attest to given the cheque we write every month for our ads.

Every time we pay Google, I have a fantasy of showing up on the first page of the search term associated with our business and being able to stop making those Google folks even richer.

I say fantasy as I have essentially surrendered on Search Engine Optimization. I’ve done all the things that were supposed to: key word density, <h> tags, <meta> tags, content update, blah, blah, blah. Not even close. The best we’ve been able to do with one of our search terms is get it from about 500 to 60. Not bad but we’ve exhausted all the conventional wisdom on what to do to improve ranking.

What’s the problem? I know that there are ways to go higher, but they seem to involve a fair bit of time and money. For example, one of our larger competitors boasted had the #1 SEO result for “sales training”. I met one of the principals who said that they hired a bunch of Indian contractors to create links back to their site – boasting their ranking. Unfortunately, someone must have come up with a better ploy as that same company is now #9 and dropping. So even if you crack the code, you need to stay on it and figure out how to stay on top.

I remember back in big company days where we had a good size marketing budget and could hire an external SEO consultant, it was hard. We good initial relatively good results but things changed so quickly and we were continually getting bumped.

That’s really the problem. I wouldn’t mind taking our annual Adsense budget and paying for an SEO consultant to do their magic – but how long would it last? As a micro business, we do not have the time or resources to dedicate to the ongoing SEO battle.

Now – all these Internet marketing folks will be screaming that this is B.S. That you, too, can get top SEO results. One method often discussed is choosing niche search terms. More obscure search terms that a much smaller number of people search for but that a smaller number of competitors focus on. But then you are creating web copy with a high keyword density of more obscure terms which screws up people that go to your site from other sources. And you need a bunch of them.

Screw it! I will pay my $.50 a click and make Eric S richer, and Steve B (more) frustrated.

C.

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A Cheap Trick … that Works

May 16th, 2008 Chris

I was going through tips from a recent session on web marketing and I came across one that made me cringe – the dreaded drop-in pop-up. Yep – that horrible thing that comes floating in front of content that you’re trying to read with some obnoxious request to sign up for a free newsletter, e-zine (puke – I hate that term), report, etc…

Having had all my conventional wisdom proven wrong about a million times in the last year, I decided to tried it. The problem is that, despite my qualms, it worked. It really worked. I threw it on every page with a one month “snooze button” (if dismissed with a no-thanks, it goes away site-wide for a month), and registrations for our newsletter more than doubled. It is the single most cost effective way that we’ve increased our database in the last year (and one of the easiest). You can see our implementation at www.EngageSelling.com.

Hold your nose and do it!

What did I use to implement the drop-in? Because I am the cheapest bastard on the face of the earth, I started going down the free scripts route. Of all the free scripts sites, I found www.dynamicdrive.com was the best with lots of robust and well documented examples.

The problem is that most of the free scripts didn’t have exactly the features I wanted. I wanted to be able to dismiss the drop-in from any page on the site and not have it return for a specific amount of time (or ever). After a fair bit of research I found Advanced DHTML Pop-Up. Had all the features, was easy to use and Joe provided awesome support. And it was cheap. Highly recommended.

C.

Posted in Prospecting, Web | No Comments »

Crooked Stamps and Slit Wrists

May 15th, 2008 Chris

As I was leaving my job at Entrust where I used to work, Colleen wanted to introduce me to the world of micro business marketing by going with her to a Dan Kennedy event. You may have heard of this guy – he’s basically built a marketing empire around helping micro and small businesses market and sell more.

So, we headed off to this event last year and let me tell you – I had a full blown coronary. You have to remember that I, like many in the corporate world, was used to a formalized marketing process with things like marketing plans, message documents, etc… And typically the details of implementation were handled by specialists in the Product Marketing and Marketing Communication departments. And all was designed for BB2BB (big business to big business) marketing.

So in I walked and in my first session the tactics of mailers were being discussed. To my horror, there was a long conversation over the placement of stamps. Did you know that hand stamping increases open rate? Even better yet, if you place the stamps in a crooked fashion, your open rate increases even more.

After twenty years in larger organizations, the vision of my new career centering on placing crooked stamps was almost enough to drive me to do myself in. What was I going to do? I had already given notice! Luckily, we were at lunch when the full crisis hit and all there was on the table was a butter knife. It was full blown case of congnitive dissonance at a self-destructive level.

Luckily Colleen talked me off the cliff. Turns out that there were additional sessions that were much, much more interesting and applicable to our biz (with tactics I didn’t find completely demeaning). Much of it is still completely counter-intuitive to me and my residial corporate brain. But, the techniques I learned do actually work. I’ll talk about some of my best lessons learned over the next few weeks.

For for anyone really interested in drinking from the firehouse – check out this year’s event. Now remember – the techniques that work may clang with everything you learned in big business so do not panic when you see 10 feet long web pages and cheesey pop-ups. Trust me – this stuff works (even if I hate it).

C.

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