Revolutionary ideas are often just that ideas. To realize your vision of bringing an innovation to life you'll need the knowledge and confidence to protect those ideas from infancy to realization. This game has the highest of stakes and you need an unfair advantage to give you the best possible chance to win.
From Shark Tank to Fortune 500 companies, patents play an integral role in value creation, securing venture capital, and acquisition. If you are trying to bring something new into this world, whether you are an entrepreneur or the CEO of a multi-national corporation, your ability to play the patent game could be the difference between success and failure.
You need information, but you don't want to go to law school, read a dry textbook, or pay a patent attorney hundreds of dollars an hour to learn what you need to make smart decisions. The Patent Game will give you this critical information efficiently and effectively. The first half of the book covers the basics of patents, often with game-related analogies, to help you define winning for your company or innovation. The second half will help guide you to one of eighteen different patent strategies that might be the ideal approach for your innovation. Each strategy has an introduction, play-by-play with diagrams, and a practical real-world example.
The author, Vance VanDrake, is a patent attorney, law firm partner, and co-founder of multiple early stage and venture-backed companies. He has worked with hundreds of startups and technologists to add over a billion dollars in value to these ventures. He created The Patent Game to serve as an easy-to-understand, comprehensive guide to developing a patent strategy that fits your business needs. Don't let someone else control the pieces on the board take control of your own destiny and make your vision a reality.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Vance V VanDrake III. My title is that of a practicing patent attorney and partner in my law firm, but that is just the most prominent hat I wear. I'm a constant learner and passionate teacher, an active angel investor, a connector, and a cheerleader for early stage and growth businesses. My friends and clients also know me as an entrepreneur in disguise: I've cofounded three companies that taught me what it's like to sit on the other side of the table. The knowledge I gained about the finer points of running a business and working with a wide array of people has proven invaluable in my efforts to provide versatile and individualized assistance for companies seeking optimized patent strategies. These efforts have helped my clients add over $1 billion in value that has been realized through multi-million dollar exits, securing investment at high valuations, lucrative licenses, and high-value relationships with strategic partners.
I wasn't aware of patent law as a possible career path until I was nearly finished with college, but once I found my calling I dove in head first. I passed the first of the two required bar exams for becoming a patent attorney while I was still in college at Butler University. I started my career as a patent agent at Ethicon Endo-Surgery, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, where I cut my teeth working on radio frequency and harmonic scalpel medical device technology. At Ethicon, I had the opportunity to work and train with some of the best patent professionals in the world, experiencing a sort of baptism by fire in the high-stakes field of medical device patents. My time working for Johnson & Johnson taught me a lot about how big companies can and should play the patent game.
