Source: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/10/someone-stole-my-startup-idea-%E2%80%93-part-3-the-best-defense-is-a-good-strategy/?like=1&_wpnonce=f554ea9b90
Timestamp: 2014-04-21 07:16:24
Document Index: 533592870

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 3', 'art 2', 'art 3', 'art 3', 'art 3', 'art 3', 'art 3']

Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 3: The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy | Steve Blank
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Posted on December 10, 2009 by steveblank	Early on in my career I took a “we’re moving too fast to deal with lawyers” attitude to patents and Intellectual Property (IP.) That changed when I joined the board of a startup, and we sued Microsoft and Sony on the same day for patent infringement – and won $120 million.
What is Protectable
Branding (i.e. Nike swoosh)
marks, logos, slogans
software, songs, movies, web site content
non-public technology
technology, business information
A copyright protects creative works of authorship; typically songs, books, movies, photos, etc. Copyright gives you the right to prevent others from copying, distributing or making derivatives of your work. It protects “expressions” of ideas but does not protect the underlying ideas. (If your product is software, copyright is also used to prevent someone from stealing your software and reselling it as machine and/or source code.) Copyright protection lasts practically forever. Registration is optional, but is required to sue for infringement. Contract
- Disclosure in a printed publication: Red flags: White paper, journal/conference article, Web site
- Offer for sale in the U.S.:Red flags: Start of sales effort, Price list, price quotation, Trade show demonstration, Any demonstration not under NDA
- Public use in the U.S.
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Fresh From Twitter: Someone Stole My … « Start-IP, on December 10, 2009 at 6:41 am said:	[...] Stole My Startup Idea u2013 Part 3: The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy http://bit.ly/7SHJxE #startup #advice ← Older Posts [...]
Reply	Michael F. Martin, on December 10, 2009 at 10:34 am said:	The way you put Key Idea # 1 is going to be misleading. Intellectual property does create value, but only indirectly by facilitating relationships that would be tricky to initiate or maintain without both contract and well-defined property rights in place. But it’s really the people — the inventors and whoever else turns their ideas into products that people buy –, the people create the value.
Reply	links for 2009-12-10 « Blarney Fellow, on December 10, 2009 at 5:33 pm said:	[...] Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 3: The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy « Steve Blank (tags: legal startup ip) [...]
Reply	Fresh From Twitter: StartupNews: Someone Stole … « Start-IP, on December 11, 2009 at 2:58 am said:	[...] Someone Stole My Startup Idea u2013 Part 3: The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy http://bit.ly/5i95n6 ← Older Posts [...]
Reply	Fresh From Twitter: Someone Stole My … « Start-IP, on December 11, 2009 at 8:09 am said:	[...] Stole My Startup Idea u2013 Part 3: The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy u00ab Steve Blank http://bit.ly/8ff6KX ← Older Posts | [...]
Reply	Fresh From Twitter: RT @jg_howard: Someone … « Start-IP, on December 11, 2009 at 8:10 am said:	[...] Stole My Startup Idea u2013 Part 3: The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy u00ab Steve Blank http://bit.ly/8ff6KX ← Older Posts [...]
Reply	Ghillie Suit Videos, on December 11, 2009 at 10:32 am said:	This clears up alot for me. I’ve always wondering if ecommerce stores could patent or protect against pricing strategies or even unique product descriptions.
Reply	Kevin Dewalt, on December 20, 2009 at 5:32 am said:	Steve,
Of course I’m primarily talking about software-based startups at this point, but ultimately all technologies get commoditized and it will probably get faster and easier to build hardware, semiconductors, and medical devices such that market risk becomes a bigger driving force in these industries as well. I am curious to see how you and any other board members have advised entrepreneurs in these situations.
Reply	Roger Wilco, on May 26, 2010 at 7:08 am said:	Good question; I’m wondering the same thing and I would love to hear Steve’s viewpoint on this. I’m working at a startup now that loves to tout that it has a pile of provisional patents on software technology, but this has done little good for discovering what the customer needs (and, since the founder started with the patents when he finished the research at his university, is sort of backwards and stifling). For us, the IP claims seems little more than fluff for investors, and still, fruitless, since we haven’t gotten funded.
Reply	23 Startup Management Practices Articles For Startup Leaders | Tech Start Hub, on July 30, 2012 at 3:34 am said:	[...] 3-part post from Steve Blank on intellectual property defense for [...]