Launching a Product - How do I protect my invention?

Hello, my name is Ian Peterman, CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and today we're going to talk about how to share your idea with manufacturers, designers, basically anybody that you need to bring your idea to in order to move it forward. And best practices and how to keep your idea safe, protected, and ensure that you're able to go to market with the advantage you have right now. So one of the first things that I ask every single client, when— if you contact us through a contact form, email, whatever it is, one of the first things we do is we send you a link to an NDA. And ours is actually— it's a mutual non-circumvent non-disclosure agreement. It is one of the most ironclad NDAs that I've seen out there, uh, well, protecting your idea. And the reason we do that is because if you're trying to get a patent, it really helps with that. If you want to keep your competitive advantage, that is something that needs to be in place. And we take our clients you know, IP very seriously, and you should do this. Probably why you're watching is you're trying to figure out how can you protect your IP. IP is something that, to me and everyone that I know that really cares in the industry, they look at IP— it is extremely valuable if you have an idea, you should protect it. And there's many ways to do that. And that first level of protection is just get an NDA. You know, I work with manufacturers, I work with designers, I work with consultants. You know, I've been working in the product field for over 15 years, and NDAs— I've signed probably thousands of NDAs at this point. Even working inside of a company, I've had to sign Additional NDAs depending on the specific project that I was working on, or, you know, working, working with startups and consulting on product development and in my firm working on many different clients' projects. I've signed an NDA with almost every single client, and that's why you'll notice when you look at our portfolio, it's rather slim. There's even projects that I can't tell anyone that I've ever worked on. That's how, that's how much different IP I've worked on and how secretive you can get. And so your level, you know, that'll be determined on what field you're working in, you know, if it's a controlled area or not, but that's your first level. Just get an NDA, whether you're reaching out to a manufacturer and don't be afraid, like manufacturers deal with NDAs all the time. They're If they refuse, if a manufacturer refuses to sign an NDA before they receive drawings from you, you should probably be a little suspicious. That being said, some manufacturers, because of what they do, they may not really care. They may, and they may use it as a filter. Well, if we have to sign an NDA, we don't really care because we have our big clients we already have under NDA. And so You know, if somebody doesn't wanna sign an NDA, move on. You know, there's no harm in signing an NDA. It doesn't limit anything other than nobody can steal your idea. Of course, there's— I've worked with designers that haven't signed NDAs. I've worked with, you know, different people like that, and most of it comes down to in consulting, That can be a little bit of a gray zone, but you can still sign an NDA, a non-disclosure. Even consultants can do it. It doesn't limit your ability to practice what you're doing. So after the NDA, something that we do on every drawing that goes out, every document that goes out, is make sure that it has who the owner is on it. So on drawings, we make sure we fill out title box. Has, you know, at very least it'll have our information on it. If we're working with a client, we'll put our information and often our client's information on it as well, just so that it's easily marked. People know, you know, if somebody prints it off, it's there. And we add disclaimers sometimes, even just on them and say this is confidential information. Do not reproduce without permission. And, you know, is it going to stop somebody from actually printing it and stealing it? No, it won't actually. You know, it doesn't physically stop someone from doing it, but it does put it on there so that if somebody— if it is floating out there, people know it shouldn't be out there. And, you know, the people out there that are kind and law-abiding and friendly and care about other people's stuff will just destroy the document and Go on. You know, it's like the email disclaimer that we— a lot of people put in their signature, you know, this is confidential information, don't share. If you got this by accident, delete it. And so even looking up something like that to add to your email signature can help you. It helps, you know, just put it out there. And really all it does, like the whole point of everything is to just build a solid case and put it in front of people that when you talk to them, yeah, this is proprietary. This is not something you can publicly share. Don't go tell all your friends about this. You know, in having that in your email signature makes it just so it adds professionalism, and it also adds this whole, hey, don't share this stuff. This— what I'm sending you is proprietary. It is information that shouldn't be shared. Um, and so those pieces are— both of those things will be helpful, making sure you have those notices and, and your information added to any documents that you send over. Always beneficial. Make sure that you have an NDA with, with everyone that you can. And then beyond that, it really comes down to, you know, what level of protection you need. If you need a patent, if it's something that's patentable, do it. Know that there are many companies out there producing products that are not patented and actually can't be patented now. Because they've been out there, they've been in the market, they've— there's nothing patentable about them now. And they're— those companies are doing fantastic. That's not for everyone. So it really just depends on kind of a cost-value analysis on your part of whether that's required. But patents are wonderfully protective. They are some of the most protective legal documents that you can receive for your idea. There's, you know, different kinds of patents. There's design patents, there's utility patents, and more. There's trademarking, copywriting. There's all kinds of ways to protect your idea so when you start sharing it, it is something that is protected and people know. Like, people can look up a patent and it's from a third-party office. It's not you just saying, oh, I have a patent. It's you giving a patent number and then they'll be able to reference it, And so those are kind of your— those are your levels. And even with the patent, I would still get an NDA. We signed NDAs with companies that have patents often as well. So, you know, there's a lot of information. There's the actual patent, but then there's all the things and all the documents that go around actually producing a product that you want to protect with an NDA. And so that NDA, first level, Making sure that your contact information, your information is in and attached to all documents that you send. You know, some little disclaimer on your emails, always handy. And then lastly, if you need that level, patenting. And you can do— if you're in the US, there's provisional patenting. I'm not entirely sure about other countries as I haven't been too much involved in international patenting. My focus has been more in US patenting. So Think about that. Look at those. A provisional patent can be a nice little stopgap to help you in doing this. And after that, just work with people that are— that you want to work with. Check them out. Make them sell you, so to speak. Let them show you how well they're going to take care of you. Talk to them about their process. You can always ask companies What do you do with the documents that I send you? What is your security protocol? How do you keep your database from being hacked? Right? So there's a lot of that kind of IT-level security that you can always talk to someone like, how— what is it? What is the encryption? What, you know, if it is sensitive. If it's not extremely sensitive, don't go down that path, especially if you don't actually know security on the IT level. Don't start throwing out random encryption types and saying, are you this encrypted? Are you this? If you don't actually know and understand it yourself. So, but feel free to ask, like, what's your policy? Do you keep these files? Do you have a record? What does that look like? And make sure your NDA, you can include in your NDA a term of, okay, well, if we can't, if we terminate this, I want everything back. Everything has to be deleted, purged, or sent returned to me, and that's pretty standard in any NDA. And you know there's lots of great templates online, but those things NDA, put your name on everything and patent it if you need to, and you will be well protected, and you'll be able to take that idea and go to any manufacturer, designer, design firm, and get your product developing.