How to protect technology based business idea?

[nk400]

I've come up with a very good business idea, which I'm sure would be popular, but I'm having trouble thinking up ways of protecting it.

To give a very vague explanation on what the idea is about, basically it takes data from source delivered by a 3rd party (lets say in excel format) and presents it in a more visually appealing way. It can potentially take data from multiple 3rd parties in order to produce this 'presentation.'

As far as I'm aware this can't be patented. There is no new technology in terms of how it grabs the data or processess it, it just uses the data in a creative way.

So with that in mind, are there any business concepts I could use so that once the product is released it cannot be copied easily?

My first thoughts would be to try and obtain exclusivity agreements from the main 3rd party data sources so that anyone trying to copy would not be able to get this data from the usual sources. But that might be hard given it's a startup...

Any thoughts?

 

[Carsie]

I'm not too sure that you can protect what you're doing because it's the application of the technology not the technology per se, if it were the latter then you'd go down the IP route.

Why not approach the problem using marketing rather than the legal position?

Can you create sufficient differentiation in the market to enable you to gain critical mass before you are copied? can you build a sufficient compelling reason as to why I would want to buy your solution and only your solution?- yes?

As an example - Google recently announced that they won't be producing a Facebook rival

As I'm sure you're aware as fast as you launch a technology product to market it gets copied within a very short space of time - have I just read that the latest Kindle/Tablet PC has just been hacked?

I think marketing is your answer

 

[Billmccallum]

As Carsie said, marketing is the way forward...

Create a brand name for your product and copyright the name, although others might copy it, they can't copy the name you give it.

Getting to market first will give you the advantage, so make the most of it while you can.

The other alternative is to sell the "Brand" to a competitor as soon as you get some recognition.

 

[oldeagleeye]

I agree with whats been said before. Stop buggering about worying about protecting the idea get out there a sell. Establish yourself as the pioneer and market leader.

Rob

 

[gentech5]

So you are going to take data in one format, process it, and present it in another format? That's basically called data visualisation.

you cannot patent or protect it. Best thing you can do is to secure your code and algorithms..

And ...maybe..am not sure about this.. but you could copyright the design of the visualisations themselves? if it's original content, you might get some level of protection..even if am not sure it'll help a lot.

Taking any data and converting it to anything else is easy and trivial enough.. but turning them into really meaningful and pretty output is the real deal..if I were you, that's where i'd concentrate more.

If you haven't already developed your product, there are loads of excellent free and paid libraries that you can use to easily develop your product. Heck even add a layer of business intelligence on top of it.

If your datasource is actually excel, or even ms sql, you can do create a few gems with wpf or silverlight rather easily and cheaply.

Whether you want to show the final visualisation as graphs, charts, or interactive 3d objects/animations, there are tools out there to enable you to build something up rather quickly and easily.

 

[captaincloser]

I agree with whats been said before. Stop buggering about worying about protecting the idea get out there a sell. Establish yourself as the pioneer and market leader.Rob

A whole whopping great industry as big as a mountain is built on 'protecting ideas' and from that mountain the equivalent of a few grains of sand go on to be wildy successful and protected. For the rest (As oldeagleye says ..get out there and sell).... (and stop prevaricating)...

 

[nk400]

Thanks guys.