How do you protect your product IP and business interests when doing your product development and manufacturing in Asian countries? This is a common concern for entrepreneurs, hardware startups, and SMEs, and rightly so...after all, you don't want to go through the hard work of developing your new product idea and bringing it to market over many months only to be undercut by copycats. You also want to control your project, and not have suppliers taking advantage of you if they have too much … [Read more...]
Manufacture in China, Get Your Product Copied? Not That Simple.
There are many examples out there of companies that got in big trouble because of their suppliers in China. In many cases, a supplier got very tempted to start selling the same product on their customer’s market. As a result, people who are designing and developing a new product are often reluctant to plan for manufacturing in China, even when the difference in cost will obviously be massive. … [Read more...]
Is It Beneficial To Be First To Market With Your New Product Idea? [Podcast]
In this episode... A recent China Law Blog article questions the wisdom of rushing out your innovative new made-in-China product in order to 'beat the copycats' to market. While there are some situations where this may have some merit, sacrificing IP protection for speed seldom makes sense as you'll find out in this episode. What are the benefits and are they outweighed by the risks? What should you do to protect IP? When is the 'right time' to go public with your exciting new product and … [Read more...]
New Product Launch: Taking Shortcuts vs. Preventing Risks
You are developing a new product. There is currently nothing like your product on the market. You have high confidence that it will be successful (otherwise, why are you working on this project?). You need to make a choice. Do you want to do things fast? That's tempting, because who knows what the market will look like in 12 months. Or do you want to do things right? That means investing money and time in de-risking your project. Let's look at what these 2 approaches mean, in … [Read more...]