While on an internship in the New Mexican desert in Albuquerque, N.M., in 2011, an idea sparked within Jonathan DiClemente. He wanted to put windmill-type turbines in the oceans to create energy from tidal shifts, the mechanical engineering senior said.
DiClemente said he had no clue his idea would inspire and lead him to be CEO of his own company, Current Tidal, which retrofits dams to make energy. He’ll do anything to protect it.
But protecting intellectual property is difficult, said law professor Adam Candeub, who has teamed up with the Intellectual Property Startup Project, or IPSP, to help entrepreneurs through the process. PSP is a program where law students help prepare the paperwork for free for start-up companies, such as DiClemente’s, who want patents.
This semester, Candeub, director of the Intellectual Property, Information and Communications Law Program in MSU’s College of Law, said the IPSP received requests from 15 to 20 start-up companies in Michigan.
Patent-worthy ideas must be original, non-obvious and marshalled by an invention, Candeub said.
“Let’s say you have a really good idea, … a new way to access MP3 files so as to be accessed any place in the world on any device,” he said. “You want to patent it so if someone else comes up with that idea, you can say, ‘No, no, no, no, no. That’s my idea.’”
Obtaining a patent can cost $15,000 to $25,000 and take two to three years to process, said Richard Chylla, executive director of MSU Technologies . While the actual patent only costs a few hundred dollars, Chylla said the legal fees of preparing the patent requests add to the cost, and fewer patent examiners has led to a longer wait.
MSU also has MSU Technologies, which works with MSU innovators and helps inventors patent their discoveries that are MSU property.
Chylla said each year, MSU Technologies requests about 130 to 150 patents, grants between 50 and 60 patents and licenses about 40 to 50 patents with companies through contracts.
“A good way to think about intellectual property is like real property,” Chylla said. “You don’t want someone using your car without your permission.”
DiClemente said he has considered utilizing IPSP’s services, but because of the high cost, has not yet made progress. He has put trademarks and trade secrets on Current Tidal.
“I’m pretty sure that the stuff we are working on is novel enough to patent,” DiClemente said. “It’s definitely patentable — it’s just the matter of getting funds to do so.”
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