Hard Drivin’, Hard Bargainin’: Investigating Midway’s ‘Ghost Racer’ Patent
If a patent is filed in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and no one is around to enforce it, does it make any money?
This somewhat zen query actually hides a serious business question about the best way to extract value from a patent. Sure, there’s some prestige associated with publicly staking your claim to an idea before anyone else, but prestige doesn’t pay the bills. It takes a significant investment of time and money to get a patent — between 18 to 30 months and thousands of dollars in filing fees on average, according to PatentInfo.com. In the business world, the point of such investments is usually to make money.
