Foundations of IP Strategy

From your own experience and what you have learned so far, how might Andrew have considered proceeding differently with his IP strategy right from the outset?

Let’s hear from Andrew on some of his lessons learned.

1. Andrew wonders whether he would have been better off if he had not bothered protecting his IP at all and had used the money instead on getting to market first.

   Why?

   Because Andrew’s product doesn’t have a long life cycle, he may have been better off relying on “first-mover advantage“ by investing his money in:

   • adopting a more robust marketing strategy; and
   • enhancing his manufacturing capacity.

2. Or he wonders whether he may have been better off opting exclusively for industrial design protection.

   Why?

   Because there may be advantages to seeking other forms of IP protection, which may have been less expensive to secure and easier to enforce and may have been equally effective at achieving Andrew’s overall business goals.
   

Let’s hear from Andrew about this consideration further:

3. If Andrew had disclosed less about his pens for the crowdfunding campaign, what advantages, if any, might he have gained?

   He could have considered disclosing less information in his crowdfunding campaign so that the Kickstarter website would have provided less of a road map for someone to copy his invention and his design.

   Andrew may also have considered setting a realistic goal for the amount of money he wanted to raise and sticking to it. In this way, he may not have raised a flag about the demand for his product and he might have been a less attractive target for counterfeiters, who ended up taking advantage of the popularity of his pen.