Through careful selection of the countries in which to obtain protections for its intellectual assets, your company can leverage its enhanced profitability in those protected markets to subsidize, where legally permitted, competition-busting prices in markets where it lacks intellectual property protection.
Frequently, companies believe they must seek and maintain patent protection throughout the industrialized world. Yet doing so can be extremely expensive, ultimately costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. As a result of those phenomenal costs and the corresponding diminishing returns associated with many of those countries, taking the “patent everywhere” approach can actually undermine the return on the investment for the resulting family of patents.
Fortunately, sales of patent-protected products in large markets can generate sufficient profits to, where legally permitted, subsidize competition-discouraging pricing of those products in many smaller, unpatented markets. So, prior to deciding where to patent, your company should carefully analyze the geographical distribution of the expected global market for products that embody each innovative concept, and seek to estimate demand, pricing, and profitability in each country of interest, as well as the competitive and legal landscape.