Step 9:  Improving the Strength of Your Patent

It happens all too often: Just when inventors are starting to collect invention royalties from their patent, a competitor finds a way to "work around" the patent, flooding the market with cheaper products that are strikingly similar to the original, and consequently cheating the inventors out of the millions that should have been theirs! Unfortunately, if someone finds such a "work-around" to your patent, what they're doing is perfectly legal.

Don't wait to find yourself sitting around crying over the unfairness of the situation. Instead, take preventative measures now, and this scenario will never happen! A factor that really determines how easy it is for copycats to work around your patent is called the strength of the patent. The principle factor that determines the strength of your patent lies in how novel and unobvious your invention really is. Whether your patent is strong or weak, you want to protect your investment as much as possible or you could lose millions in royalties.

Taking the time to deter copycats is a relatively simple procedure when you think about the huge losses you might incur if you don't do anything at all.