Congratulations. You finished the course. This is our summary video of the whole course. So you are done. Now, as you're thinking about that, let me tell you this is one of the most important and useful ways to protect business innovation with patent. Patents matter, they are valuable. But it's not the only way to protect business innovations. And even though you've finished this course, there may be other ways to protect patents, or to protect innovations besides patent that you could learn from. And I recommend courses on copyright, trademark, and strategy as a good fit with, or blend with patents as one way, one tool in our arsenal of weapons to protect our business innovation. In this course, we've talked about introduction and overview of patents. The process of getting a patent, why it takes so long, and why it's difficult, and what is required in order to get the application in for a patent. And some interesting case examples and advanced topics related to patent. As we think about what we cover in our introductory session, we talked about what is a patent, what do they protect, why governments create them, how do we get one, and where are they valid. If I were to say what is the one takeaway you should take from this module, I think where are they valid is probably the most important thing for you to remember. A patent is only valid in a single country. That means if you get a patent in America, you can sue an American you cannot sue in Canada. You need a Canadian patent. If you get a patent in Hong Kong, you can't sue in mainland China. You need a patent in mainland because Hong Kong maybe part of China, but it's not the same legal jurisdiction. It's not the same patent. So, you need a different patent in Mainland. Every jurisdiction or country has their own patents. So, you need a patent everywhere you want to sue. So, that's an important consideration to keep in mind. When we talk about patents there are also multiple types of patents. Utility patents are the most common, and the most frequent. That's 90 percent of patents in America. But in China 30 percent of patents are utility model patents or petty patents. These don't exist in America, but they do matter because in countries like China, Japan, Germany, Denmark where you can get a utility model patent, they can be used to file a lawsuit for a significant amount of money, and they can be used to protect a minor or small innovation. That would not otherwise be patentable in the US, but it might be in other countries. So, it's minor petty patent can still be worth money. Design patents often dismissed in the past, but big judgments have happened and they can be worth a lot of money. About 10 percent of patents are design patents, and they protect appearance much the way copyright does, but for manufactured good. Copyright does not protect manufactured goods. So now, we have design patents to do that for. And plant patents, I'm not going to spend much time on. There are about one percent of patents in America, that are very specialized area. They do matter when they're useful but they're not very common. So, we want to focus on those here and we're doomed. The process of getting a patent, I guess the bottom line is get a provisional patent, it's easy cheap fast to do, the rest of the process of going to take it a long time, and it's going to be a lot of money and a lot of work, that will take time and there's a good chance you're going to have to end up in court at the end of this process. The requirements for getting a patent include novelty, utility, and non-obviousness. Novelty and utility are easy to see. Non-obvious is tricky. And it's non-obvious that most of the time is going to get your patent denied. That's where your battle is going to be, and that's where you have to focus on, how to show that and demonstrate that you'll spend a lot of effort on. Beyond the basics we talked about software patents, and business process patents, and why they matter, why the US allows them, why other countries don't. Patenting life which is where a lot of money is going into a lot of opportunity, and it's changing our world. Being able to extend lifelong, or being able to have a biotech industry as a major investment opportunity and, RND spending group. We talked about patent trolls and why they might occasionally be useful and why they are annoying, and how they're becoming less powerful due to some recent court ruling. Smart phone wars, Big giant companies suing each other, billions of dollars of judgments, billions of dollars being paid for patents. This is big money. Patents are big money and their weapons for huge companies is to sue each other. And then finally, some case examples of entrepreneurs or smaller businesses using patents in a way to help them create value, and being able to build a business. Build a brand. Create something of value that might be able to be sold to a large company. Or might be able to be built into a large company. Patents give you time and protection that you might not otherwise have. Someone asked me, should I get a patent if I'm a small company, it's hard it's, expensive, it's risky, it's difficult. And the answer is yes. If you have an invention that is patentable. Yes, you should get a patent because if you don't, Someone larger than you is going to copy you, they're going to take your idea, and are now going to pay you for it. You don't have time to build a brand, to build a market position, and a patent can protect you, and enable you to sell out for a lot of money if you are successful in getting a patent. Even if your patent gets somebody finds a way around, it still gives you some time and some protection. So, yes, it's difficult, it's challenging, but it's worth it. Thank you for being part of our course. We look forward to the opportunity to share with you other ideas on ways to protect business innovations via copyright, trademark, or strategy if you take any of our other three courses here. Thank you.
