Patent Enforcement Insurance Makes Your Company Valuable
Why should I get a patent? I don’t have enough money to enforce it.
Many startup companies don’t bother with patents because they don’t think they can enforce them. And they are right. A patent lawsuit can be very expensive, and the game of enforcement is really a big game of chicken: both sides are hoping that the other side runs out of money first.
BlueIron offers Patent Enforcement Insurance
With patent enforcement insurance offered by BlueIron, you can enforce your patents without draining your budget. For a startup company, $500K of enforcement insurance only costs around $6K/year. For less than the cost of a hot desk at your local coworking space, your patents can be the business tool they were intended to be.
By having enforcement insurance, you have leverage to negotiate with copycats. You can have them cease and desist or you can have them take a license from you. The insurance gives you the big stick to extract some value from your hard work and your valuable assets.
Patent Enforcement Is Not Complicated
With a Patent Enforcement Insurance policy from BlueIron, you have total control of any enforcement action. You chose whether or not you want to go after an infringer, and you control how it gets done. You can choose your attorney, or – for a discount – you can use an attorney provided by the insurance company.
If you find out that someone is copying your invention or stealing your technology, the insurance policy will pay for attorney time to send cease and desist letters, file a lawsuit, and any negotiation with your competitor. While you are involved all the way through, the heavy lifting is done by the attorneys that are paid through the policy.
Patent Enforcement Insurance Makes Your Company Valuable
Having a patent enforcement insurance policy means that your company’s IP assets can be enforced, which means your company is far more valuable than if you didn’t have the coverage.
Many startup companies have patents but they might be infringed by Big Company. How do they enforce their patents? Most of them don’t enforce them, meaning that their patents are essentially worthless. Alternatively, they might be able to find a contingency fee attorney to take their patents case or sell to a patent troll. In either case, nobody is really interested in a patent unless there is $10M or even $50M at stake. It just doesn’t make sense to enforce if there isn’t a huge amount of money at stake.
With even a relatively small amount of insurance, you have enough legal firepower to negotiate with your competitors. This dramatically increases your company value by making you the leader in your field. Think about it: a cease and desist letter from you will bring your competitors to the negotiating table, allowing you to license your technology or stop the competitor in their tracks. This is the legal right that you have by being a leader and innovator in the market.
Is this trolling? No. This is using the rights that are given to inventors in our Constitution. Sadly, it is very expensive to enforce your patent rights, but when you do so, your patents start generating business value for your company.
If you have questions about patent enforcement insurance, please give us a call. We look forward to hearing from you.