by Cullen Jennings, CTO of Security and Collaboration at Cisco
Whether you work for a large company or you’re on the ground floor of a small startup, you’re probably coming up with new ideas for solving everyday problems. But how do you know when one of those ideas is a good idea, and how do you protect your invention?
There’s a legal process, of course, to filing a patent, but there’s also a roadmap to creating something patent-worthy — one that begins well before the first brainstorming session.
I’ve spent the majority of my career inventing: For more than 25 years, I’ve worked on the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and have more than 100 patents in that space. I also lead a team of problem solvers and innovators at Cisco that creates game-changing solutions for the future.
Our team’s charter is to always push the state of the art forward in security and collaboration. Inventing is just part of the job, so it’s essential to create an environment that allows that process to thrive.
Before Getting Started
Why are patents important?
For companies, patents offer protection from others stealing ideas. A well-stacked patent portfolio also lets companies like Cisco, for example, trade patents with other companies so that we can keep innovating and building great products based on the best ideas out there.
For the technology ecosystem as a whole, patents make the world go round. Patents are a way for small companies to compete with larger ones.
And for the individual? If you have a patent on your resume (especially if you’re not an engineer), you’re a stand-out before you even get an interview.
How To Patent An Invention
Step 1: Create space for ideas, good and bad.
Nothing starts out as a good idea. Every idea is born a bad one that becomes better over time. So it’s paramount to create a culture where bad ideas aren’t automatically killed but have room to evolve and transform.
Key to creating this kind of culture is to make sure all team members believe they are inventors. It is my experience that literally no one believes this. Non-engineers on my team assume you have to be an engineer to invent something. The junior engineers think you have to be very senior to go through the process. Meanwhile, those senior engineers often think that the entrepreneurial types are more likely to have new ideas worth patenting.
We are all inventors. If you have a problem to solve, and you’re thinking about a way to solve it, you’re an inventor.
Encourage the more senior members of your team, particularly those who have already gone through the inventing/patenting process, to keep an eye open for other team members who are trying to invent something or who want to join discussions about ways to solve problems. If they hear an idea that might be patentable, they can encourage that person to follow it.
Step 2: Come up with a good idea.
Often people come up with a problem, then imagine a “machine” that could solve it. That’s not an invention; that’s a wish, and a wish is just half of the problem. Creating a well-stated problem is the hardest part of the inventing process. But after that, finding the solution becomes easy.
Once you’ve defined your problem, encourage brainstorming to solve it. Get different people in one room, and they’ll all contribute different ideas to the solution. (Those who come up with the different parts of the idea will eventually be the authors on the patent. To be an inventor, you need to invent, not just be in the room when it happens.)
If you’re coming up with ideas but nothing seems to work, consider different techniques used in your field, and think about how to combine those techniques together. Very often, combining two different techniques to solve a problem is patentable. It’s hard to know why, but that type of thinking usually yields good solutions. If you start thinking that way when brainstorming, an hour later you’ll probably have some ideas.
Step 3: Turn a good idea into a patentable one.
So you have your idea, but your idea has to be good, and it has to be new. When you first look at your idea, it might appear to have been done before.
But look again: Is your idea using something in a new way or in a new context? Maybe you’re combining it with another technique, which makes it new. Take your broad idea, and narrow it down—getting as specific as possible. In what exact way is your idea new?
Once you’ve narrowed down your idea, it’s time to ask: Will others use it?
If no one else in the world but you will want to use your patent, or if there’s another solution that everyone already uses that is equally good, then your patent doesn’t give you any protection. People will just use the other idea.
This brings me to another point. People often think they need to patent all their ideas. That’s not necessarily true. You need to patent the idea that other people might want to use and that you want to own. If someone uses it, you’ll want them to license some rights to you.
Once you know your basic idea is good and new, and you know that others will use it, take that basic, specific idea that you’ve narrowed down, and then generalize back up: Think about all the variants of that idea, because what you want to do when you create a patent is create one that covers multiple use cases.
For example: Say you’ve built something that could work on an IP network. You might ask yourself, could this also work over a wireless network or a Bluetooth network? Often, the answer is yes. So, generalize your idea to include those scenarios.
Success Story Time
One non-technical member of my team was utterly convinced she would never have a patent. One day, our team was trying to solve a complex problem, and, while she wasn’t an engineer, she cared about solving the problem, and she knew she was in a safe space to share an idea. So she did, and her idea was a good one.
I told her, “Hey, you know that is patentable, right?” She was skeptical, but in the end, she got a patent out of it.
Not only did she help solve a problem and provide Cisco with an idea worth protecting, but she set herself apart for success in the future.
Cullen Jennings is the Chief Technology Officer of the Collaboration Technology Group at Cisco and is responsible for the next generation of enterprise collaboration products. He is focused on driving innovation with disruptive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, blockchain, machine learning, and more. One of only 19 Cisco Fellows, Cullen holds more than 100 patents.
