How to Patent Mobile Apps And Protect Your Business Idea

Have an amazing app idea? Great! Are you concerned someone else might duplicate it and apply before you? Well, fortunately, there are intellectual property laws - specifically trademark, patent and copyright law that protects mobile app ideas. Entrepreneurs like you must patent mobile apps to legally protect and own their business idea.?

Many start-ups and business owners believe in patenting their app ideas to prevent others from using, making, or selling them. Patenting an unique idea is essential for protecting it from marketplace copycats as they might seek an opportunity of stealing it. However, your app idea has to be novel and exclusive to be applicable for patent law. It should not be clone of other applications in the market. And it needs the right mobile app development services?partner for success.?

What does it mean by patent mobile app??

In simpler terms, a patent is a law for intellectual property that:

• Safeguards your app ideas against illegitimate or non-permissible usage
• Restrains other individuals or companies from modifying or selling it, considering your rightful ownership of the idea.
• Ensures no one gets profit or claims credit falsely from your unique ideation.?

How to patent mobile apps for protecting intellectual property?

?Here are the following steps on how to patent your mobile app:

1.?Find and register with a patent lawyer - To leverage the scope of your patent application getting chosen, you need to find and employ an experienced lawyer dealing in software patenting. Run a detailed analysis and find a suitable lawyer that fits your budget. ?

2.?Unveil your mobile app ideation -?Just having an app idea is not enough. With the help of professional mobile app development services,?you can convert the idea into reality so as to be eligible to get patented. As the court requires proper proof of your invention before granting patent for your app. Thus, documentation of entire app development process is essential. A prototype of your mobile app must be created to test its flow. It will enable to evaluate your app’s flowchart as it is the app procedures and functionalities that get patented and not the code.

3.?Conduct a patent search - Even if you studied market well, you are still suggested to hire a patent lawyer who executes a global search for apps similar to yours or has the same functionalities. This enables to restrain from any unforeseen breach from other organizations.

4.?Choose to file a provisional/non-provisional application - These are 2 procedures that can be utilized as a patent application for your mobile app. You can patent mobile apps using this well-defined mechanism. Under provisional application, any kind of legal compliance or declaration is not required and is an informal means to guarantee protection for your mobile app idea. This application process is time-efficient as the applicant is not involved in any legal formalities.

?The benefits of this application are:

• It allows you to use the term ‘Patent Pending’ on an app.
• It considers 1 year for creating the Minimal Viable Product.
• It is less expensive in relative to non-provisional application.

In non-provisional application, greater number of legal formalities are required to be complied to before getting access to the patent. This application must contain complete information about the app idea. And at least one claim that would legally define the boundaries of application utilization. It is time-consuming and costly, unlike the provisional application. But if you hire mobile app developers?with the right expertise, things become less costly.?

5.?Submission of patent application - This is the last stage of patenting a mobile app idea. After executing the mentioned steps and preparing a patent application, you need to file it with the respective patent authority. ?

Wrapping up

Now you know mobile app patenting needs some work there. However, if your idea is worth becoming an invention, than you must patent your app. The procedure may slightly be tedious, but it is better than handling clone apps and violation of business ideas or coming across a patent breach lawsuit. Most successful entrepreneurs consider tech partnership early on and hire mobile app developers?per their unique needs.