Do you Need to Patent Your Kickstarter or Indiegogo Project?

Launching a new project in the market is a thrilling experience that involves more creators every year, most of the time the best way to launch a new product is through a crowdfunding platform, like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, that's because you will have a lot of incentives and fewer risks than opening a brand new e-commerce without anyone knowing you and your project.

The backers that will fund the campaign want to be able to clearly see the path of a project, for example how your project works, what will you do to complete it, the technology behind it and so much more, the more info the more the people will be ready to back you.

But now the question is, could you share all of this information without patenting your project?

Before reading the article...

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DO I NEED A PATENT TO LAUNCH MY PROJECT?

Reading the terms and conditions of any crowdfunding platform, you will soon notice that crowdfunding platforms do not offer protection for your intellectual property.
Therefore, before you launch a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or other reward-based crowdfunding platform, it is essential that you take steps to protect your company’s intellectual property.

Before any public disclosure, like publishing a crowdfunding proposal, you would want to file a patent application to protect your rights.

However, if you don't have enough funds to have a formal patent application prepared, there is a way to protect your invention short of filing for a U.S. patent. We're talking about a provisional patent application, which is a low-cost option to make your invention “patent pending” for 12 months while you are raising money. This patent is a more informal patent application that costs less to prepare and file than a regular patent.

WHAT TO DO BEFORE LAUNCHING YOUR PROJECT ON CROWDFUNDING?

When you publish a crowdfunding proposal you will need to provide some details about your project or product. If you disclose the actual invention, including sufficient details so that a person would be able to re-create your invention, it could be considered as public disclosure of your invention.

Bear in mind that many countries like Europe and Asia, wouldn't allow you to publicly disclose your invention before filing a patent application, so publishing your idea on a crowdfunding platform may preclude you from filing for patent protection in other specific countries.

Remember that crowdfunding platforms can expose your ideas to a huge audience, so if you intend to sell your product worldwide, you must file for foreign patent protection, in order not to incur a knock-off of your idea in foreign markets without even knowing it.

HOW TO AVOID LOSING CONTROL OF YOUR PROJECT?

Whenever you publish your project on crowdfunding platforms there will be a lot of benefits and exposure, but also many risks that can cause start-ups and creators to lose control of their ideas. Yes, because crowdfunding puts the ideas of many early-stage entrepreneurs at risk of being stolen by big investors or corporations since many crowdfunding users will lack resources to litigate against a better-funded adversary who stole their idea.

In the crowdfunding environment there's no such thing as a non-disclosure agreement or so and there will be no protection for such matters. Be careful in not publishing many details about your project or exposing trade secrets like recipes, formulas, etc.

Another way that you could lose control of your idea is by using suggestions that people send you or posts on a crowdfunding platform’s comments. There are some platforms that specify that the project sponsor owns rights in all submitted comments, others do not define ownership of submitted materials.

In the case that your project will be successful, there is a chance that the third party will consider themself as a co-inventor. All inventors must be named in a patent application or there is the risk of the patent being invalid. Each joint owner of the patent application can license the patent rights. Therefore, before incorporating ideas and suggestions from backers, check the terms of your crowdfunding platform.

Furthermore, be careful about the ownership of your trademark. In order to register the brand name as your own, you should first register it and then publish your crowdfunding campaign.

WRAPPING IT UP

So, creators, there are a lot of things that you can do to protect your brand before a Crowdfunding campaign, let's summarize:

- Be cautious in presenting your project, do not include every single detail to avoid stealing.
- Avoid using trademarks, if your project is not registered yet because who registers the trademark first will be the official owner.
- File a provisional patent before publishing your project on crowdfunding platforms.
- Consider registering your domain before publishing your campaign.

After setting up all these security measures, always remember to create a community of interested people around your new product, gather them and keep these people warm with special and detailed content about your new product, in order to make them want to support you and be part of your journey.

If you want to analyze and prepare your pre-launch phase to launch your first product I’ve got you covered with my crowdfunding pre-launch free e-book called ''3 steps to success on Kickstarter and Indiegogo''. 

As always make sure to subscribe to my channel to stay updated on fresh new content that I’m gonna drop there.

Ciao ciao! 

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