Resources 
Every research and development project has several stages during its lifespan and each stage has to be associated with certain intellectual property activities in order to provide further protection to your new product and allow you to become or continue to be a leader of your field.
- During the stage of feasibility study- patent search for evaluation of the state of the art should be performed, this step is critical in order to decide whether it is potentially profitable to initiate the specific project or what is the best direction for its initiation.
- During the development and prototype production stage - patent search for patentability analysis has to be performed in order to stress out the innovative elements of your invention over the prior art (any published idea, product or technology) in order to decide which is the best way to provide the broadest protection for your invention. This search is also useful for negotiations with potential clients, as new product has much more value if it is proven to be innovative and its IP can potentially be protected.
- Last but not least - patent survey for non-infringement has to be performed periodically in order to assure that your device does not infringe any existing patent. This search is critical as litigations in the field of Intellectual property are very expensive and you should do any effort to avoid this situation. This periodic search is also effective for tracing the field of your invention and assure that no other company infringes your patent.
Additionally, there are other activities related to Intellectual property that need to be performed as part of company's competitive intelligence strategy. One of the critical things is a patent search for evaluation of competitors market.
LCG proposes two different strategies for working with clients on all Intellectual property activities through the different stages of protection of a successful and profitable invention:
- All Intellectual property activities that you require are performed and managed through our company. Our company, in cooperation with a leading patent attorney company with proven track record at the field - Heenan-Blaikie. We can represent your interest in patent attorney office and manage all required activities and documents for you, this way we'll substantially reduce the costs of your IP management as we receive special prices from Heenan-Blaikie.
- Your Company works with a patent attorney and we can provide our services in every stage up to the point that a prepared patent application has to be filed to the patent office by your patent attorney. By using our services you can considerably reduce costs through lower hourly rates and fewer hours needed in order to explain your invention to fellow engineer.
Patent attorney is the only who is allowed to work with governmental patent office. However, the services of patent attorney are very expensive and most activities before the actual filing of patent application could be done by our firm, thus saving your resources and efforts.
It is important to notice that LCG is engineering and not a legal firm. It is proud to provide it's customers with better understanding of their needs , therefore improved quality of service while reducing costs and increasing cost effectiveness through patenting process. More about LCG and its way of operations in "About us" and "Our services" section.
Useful Resources:
Popular Inventions and Strange Patents
While resting on laurels of the next revolutionary product you just had invented, you may want to get some more inspiration from this sample of popular inventions which present some of the brilliant ideas and remarkable marketing success. You may also find here a few peculiar ideas found at various patent databases... (See the List)