If Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention, Then Who's Your 🧔🏿Daddy?

When it comes to designing new products, I’m sure you’ve heard ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ Frankly, this is the most intuitive way of developing new products and services. But the real question is ‘a necessity to whom?’ Probably you, right? Most folks think if a problem exists for them, then that need is a burning need for everyone else.

The reality is (perhaps the cold reality), inventing solutions to problems is only part of the picture when it comes to developing new products. If you want to start and grow a business based on an invention, you’ll want to provide a solution a customer will want to buy. In other words, if necessity is the mother of invention, then the answer to ‘who’s your daddy’ is the customer. And sometimes it’s more complicated than that, because depending on the solution, you’ll have a middle-man to please (a stakeholder) before your product can get to your customer. This is especially true in the health care, medical device and pharmaceutical space where physicians, insurance companies and PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) are also relevant.

At PRECIPICE, we often say we help science and technology start-ups protect products, brands, designs, and data. We don’t overly focus on inventions per se in our mission statement, because we want to help companies grow their businesses through effective intellectual property protections. Unfortunately, you can’t science-the-sh** your way to a great business. Technology-based businesses only stay in business by understanding what their customers and stakeholders need.

One way, and perhaps the most effective way to uncover customer need, is to literally talk to people. Figuring out whether your solution could or would work for your target customers and stakeholders is a great way to start. But here’s the thing, if you disclose your invention publicly, you may run into timing issues when it comes to patent protection of the invention. So you’ll want to consider whether it makes sense to file a provisional patent application first. How you engage in product development feedback with potential customers is a good conversation to have with your patent attorney to make certain you protect your potential patent rights through the process. Our provisional patent application service may be able to protect you through your product development activities.

Last Word:

Building a successful Sci-Tech company requires making good strategic choices from the very beginning. When designing new products and services, sci-tech companies are well-advised to do product development research i.e. get stakeholder feedback. Once a solution has been invented, figure out if the proposed solution is something your customers would want. But be careful, how and when you do this could impact your patent rights.

(Gifs featured in this article can be found on giphy here and here.)

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Angela Grayson, CIPP/US, CLP  is an author, speaker, and lawyer. She is the Principal and Founder of Precipice IP, PLLC.  Angela is a patent, trademark, copyright, and technology law attorney with almost 20 years of experience helping science and technology companies protect products, brands, designs, and data from idea to launch.

👉🏿 Sign up to join our community and to learn more about our legal services visit www.precipiceip.com/purchase. Precipice provides intellectual property legal services to science and technology startups.