Ask yourself? Which side of the game do you want to be on? Do you want to be remembered as the executive who failed to recognize the business opportunity staring you in the face? Or do you want to be remembered as the visionary who executed and altered your company forever? The choice is yours.

Although anyone can claim to inventor or create something (e.g., Al Gore created the Internet), the reality is that an idea needs to be carefully considered in context of the law. If you are serious about protecting your invention, you should contact a patent attorney or patent agent. Applying for a patent, and its subsequent patent prosecution process, does cost money. You may see ads for low-cost services to file a patent on your behalf. Such solutions are viable if your goal is to boast to your friends that you patented something. However, if you have real-world business ambitions, it is imperative that the person writing the claims of your patent is a well-qualified lawyer. The adage "you get what you pay for" is very true in the intellectual property community. Realistically, a single patent is going to minimally cost you around $10K for the application fees, legal fees to write the claims, and so on. You want to find a legal professional that is a subject matter expert in your domain (whether it is IT, manufacturing, mechanical engineering, biotech).

In the U.S., the inventor has a "first to invent" claim which is different from other patenting organizations throughout the world who generally utilize "first to file." Debate over this issue, and which model best influences economic development is ongoing. Some are concerned that a change in patent rights may harm the small startup and benefit the incumbents with deeper pockets. You can read more about this topic.

Executives need vision to convert patented R&D into a profit center. Consider EMI, a london company that produces music (a music label company). In their Central Research Laboratories in Hayes, Godfrey Hounsfield had an idea to integrate X-ray slices to create a 3-D image (originally known as an EMI scan), today know as a CT or CAT scan. Godfrey was awared a Nobel Prize for his work, and later knighted. The idea came to him while picnicking in the park; however, the senior executives realized this was no picnic. They leveraged the technology (foundation patent #3,778,614), securing over 120 of the first 450 patents in this space. The legacy competitors (General Electric, Philips, Siemens) were playing catch-up with this innovator. Few executives would be brave enough to execute such a divergent business strategy.

The idea for IP Street originated with Lee, a co-founder of the US's top ranked firm for patent quality, Lee & Hayes (Spokane, Seattle, Austin, Portland, Taipei, and Beijing). Lee became engrossed in the notion of mining IP data to plot business strategy when he was hired by an investment bank to predict the likely outcomes of the landmark NTP v. Research In Motion case. In the time since, he and his firm have come to represent six of the 10 largest patent filers in the United States, and Lee has become a recognized evangelist on the rise of intellectual assets in the U.S., China, and beyond. Lee gathered his colleagues at Lee & Hayes, some IP experts and others business strategists, raised funds, and went to work assembling the technologies and talent behind IP Street today.