Why is it important to protect your Ideas? And what would be the best way to protect them?
Answers
Answer:
Many people ask: can ideas be patented? The short answer is no. Unfortunately, despite what you may have heard from late night television commercials, there is no effective way to protect an idea with any form of intellectual property protection. Copyrights protect expression and creativity, not innovation. Patents protect inventions. Neither copyrights or patents protect ideas. This is not to suggest that ideas are not valuable, but they are not valuable in the same way or sense that pop culture has led many to believe.It is, of course, axiomatic that an idea is an essential first step toward any invention. Nothing can or will happen without an idea, so in one sense ideas are a critical, and valuable, piece to the overall innovation equation. In and of themselves, however, ideas are not monetarily valuable. Without some identifiable manifestation of the idea there can be no intellectual property protection obtained and no exclusive rights will flow.
Without any protection, whether actual (i.e., in the form of an issued patent) or perceived (i.e., in the form of a pending patent application that defines the invention and could if pursued mature into an issued patent), ideas are free. Absent patent protection or a confidentiality agreement that accepts an obligation not use or disclose an idea – which are extremely difficult if not impossible to obtain with only an idea – the idea can be taken and used without payment.