Competitor has patented my "idea" for a product. What now?

[Hassassin]

Hello guys/gals!

After being the listener to a venting rant with an acquaintance, I've stumbled across a pain point in the women's clothing market that is definitely a problem worth solving for a certain demographic. Long story short, me and my wife have been brainstorming how we'd make the product better for our target demographic and ended with a "perfect" design that we didn't see from other brands major manufacturers. So I started researching manufacturers to get samples/protypes made...but guess what?

Turns out there's an established player already selling this "original" design we brainstormed and they've patented it! Now I'm concerned about this means for the actual product that I have in mind.

Is bringing my product to market basically a disaster waiting to happen?

I've ordered the competitors product to see how it could be improved, but our "perfect" design ended up being the design they're currently using (and having massive success with).

Compared to competitors, we'd provide value to the market by:

• Costing significantly less - the product is expensive
• Being targeted towards a different demographic
• Being branded with a different USP
• Improving existing features (if possible, that is)

But as a I mentioned above, is it a dumb idea to continue if I don't make any significant modifcations to the product itself?

Tagging @biophase as this seems up your alley.

 

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[biophase]

I don't have any experience with patenting or going up against a patented product, but it sounds like your "new" design is not new. You are basically copying someone else's product and trying to sell it for cheaper.

 

[woken]

I don't have any experience with patenting or going up against a patented product, but it sounds like your "new" design is not new. You are basically copying someone else's product and trying to sell it for cheaper.

That and the early bird usually get the biggest worm.

When thinking of manufacturing a new product, it pays to go deeper than 3 pages on Google
You’d better be disappointed at that point , not later.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

This just reinforces the lesson that execution > ideas. Ideas don’t pay the bills, only execution does.

The good news is, you haven’t invested and risked millions of dollars! You haven’t spent decades working on this! Move on to the next one.

 

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[Hassassin]

Definitely does, looks like it's back to the drawing board for me.

 

[JAJT]

Patents are their own whole thing and pessimistically speaking - whoever has the most money tends to win.

That being said - patents can be invalidated. One of the more common ways to do this is to claim prior art or claim that their patent is "obvious".

Prior art basically means finding a patent that pre-dates your competitor's patent. You can even buy or license this patent from the original creator and basically become the new patent holder for this design. Other times it's an expired patent with no owner or public domain. This is effectively like trying to find a very specific needle in a very large haystack.

A patent being "obvious" is effectively saying that their design isn't novel enough to warrant patenting in the first place. A very basic example is the wheel - even if nobody thought of it before, it's an obvious shape to move things around with. You could argue the general shape of a telephone is obvious as well - a mouthpiece and an earpiece is a pretty obvious solution to talking/listening.

Patent fights can be very costly. Your competitor has a lot to lose if you win (including paying YOU royalties if you own prior art because they are now infringing on you!) and companies tend to spend a lot to ensure they win these battles.

Patent holders also like to play games with court and judge locations - in the patent world, there are locations that are more friendly or hostile to certain claims and the smart patent folks try their best to direct the court cases to favorable places.

Personally, I think it would be easier not to get involved in this fight unless it's the hill you're willing to die on.

Important note - I'm not a patent expert. I merely worked at a firm that did extensive patent work for huge high tech companies (name 10 tech companies, we worked with 9 of them and probably couldn't work with the 10th because of conflicts of interest). Basically a lot of high level concepts 'rubbed off' on me. Don't take my advice or comments here as gospel - if you want to fight this, you need to talk to a lawyer.