Himanshu PatelYou come up with an incredible idea for a cleaning business that sets your business apart in the UK market. Wow! That’s great. How about if anyone has stolen your business idea and set up a cleaning company. The company that has replicated your original business idea is capturing the user share. It’s bad news!
What to do now? How can you stop that company from doing this? How can you prevent other entrepreneurs from stealing your business idea? Is there any way?
Yes. Patenting the cleaning business idea is a surefire way to keep the fraudsters at bay. Let’s understand things in detail.
What is a patent?
The patent application is all about the idea behind launching the business or creating a product includes- what’s the idea, what it does, how it works, and why it’s essential. When the business gets the patent granted from the UK government, no individual or company can use the idea to produce, sell, or import anything.
Is your cleaning business idea need to be patented? Know things in detail.
In the UK, you can’t patent everything. It means you need to check if the invention is eligible for a patent grant or not. There are three criteria- novelty, inventive, and problem-solving must be met by the patent. Otherwise, the UK government rejects the patent grant.
It’s like your cleaning business idea is resolving the carpet cleaning problem in the households, and the state grants the owner the monopoly of providing the carpet cleaning services in a specific area. No other company can use the same idea, else they are subjected to heavy penalties or legal actions taken against them.
The idea patent also helps the companies commercialize the business idea and increase funding for future expansion.
Read more :How to Make an App for Cleaning Business?
Why should you get the idea patented?
There are a lot of reasons to patent a cleaning business idea. At first, the patent application gives your business a priority over other people trying their hands with the cleaning business. The pending patent also proves to be useful for commercial reasons. Once you get your business idea patented, you will receive the monopoly and prevent others copy the idea and gain an edge using the same idea. It makes perfect sense to get the business idea patented, but it’s not easy to obtain a patent, and a couple of things need to take care of.
How to get the cleaning business idea patented?
There are two ways to apply for a patent- either you consult the advisory firm or do it on your own. However, the DIY approach is long, tedious, and time-consuming if you are new to the business. You should consider finding a patent attorney or advisor that help you prepare the application, and completing the process takes five years at the cost. Applying idea patent protection via IPO is an eight-step process that is-
- Send the application by Fax, hand, or post. Also, you can go online if it’s preferred.
- Find similar patents to ensure your business idea is new.
- Get the patent application prepared.
- You should file your application before requesting a search from IPO
- You will receive a search report within six months, and then you need to decide whether you want to continue/discontinue.
- The patent application gets published after 18 months of filing.
- Within six months of patent application publishing, you should ask for a substantive examination.
- The examination takes years, and meanwhile, you should respond to the IPO’s substantive examination.
- Finally, the patent application will be accepted or rejected.
It’s not over. The agents or advisory could help you with legal matters and throughout the application patent process. But they are not experts at prototyping, designing, and developing the business idea before the UK government. You can consult the product design firms that help you with the commercial success of a business idea.
Read more : How To Set Up A Private Cleaning Company In The UK?
How much does it cost to patent an idea?
There are a lot of things involved with getting a business idea patented. The patent application costs between £230-280 in the UK. The government provides 12 months to make the payment from the date of application filing to the date when patenting overseas decision is made by yourself.
Meanwhile, you have enough time to reach out to the target audience to gain feedback and the investors to raise funds. After four years of patent grant, the business owners need to pay annual renewal fees, which is nearly one-fourth of the application fee followed by small increments every year.
What’s more? If you crack a deal, that’s licensing deal, then the company pays for the future patenting cost and patenting overseas cost.
Summing it up
No one wants to make their unique business idea public before they launch it in a full-fledged form. But sometimes, the businesses imitate the idea and make it public before the business with the original idea does it. That’s where patenting cleaning business idea comes to the rescue. Understanding the need, the comprehensive blog enlists the what, why, when, and how elements of cleaning business idea patenting. Go through the blog to get the product idea- the UK patented.
Raj Patel
Anil Patel
