Patents Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Stellar Kent | Patent Awards & Patent Plaques

Stellar Kent | Patent Awards & Patent Plaques

The Patent Awards Recognition Company

Navigation

How to Award Your Company’s Most Innovative Employees

by Leave a Comment

One of the biggest challenges for leaders is in treating their most innovative employees fairly in relation with the rest of their staff. Innovative thinking can be highly profitable, but it can also seem scattered or disorganized to an outside observer. Of course, we want to celebrate innovative thinking, but how can we highlight this thinking and keep everyone else happy?

 

Characteristics of Innovative Employees

Highly inventive and innovative employees can often be considered neurodiverse; that is, they are thinkers in our population who didn’t learn in the same way as the majority, so they offer a new perspective on how highly complicated things work. More importantly, these individuals can explain how highly complicated things break, get repaired, and work again.

 

Celebrating innovation, therefore, needs to be a flexible process to keep inventive thinkers excited about diverse thinking. Stay flexible when ordering awards and plaques. Be aware that some creatives need wall space to create and expand on their ideas, so a set of desktop patent awards would be ideal.

 

Other creative thinkers need to build in three dimensions. In this case, your custom patent awards could include a patent wall or a series of patent plaques to celebrate innovation while staying out of the way.

 

Involve Everyone

involve everyone stellar kent

 

While it’s wonderful to have employees that produce big ideas, don’t forget that your business also needs big implementation people, or the ideas go nowhere. While patent recognition is critically important, all your staff contribute to an environment where the most creative thinkers can function successfully.

 

To make sure that all your employees are included in the success loop, consider investing in a patent wall of fame that is the first thing your visitors see. For example, investing in double sided patent displays promote the innovation of your team to everyone who enters the building. These clever display walls can also screen workspaces that may look a bit chaotic from the public eye.

 

Stay Flexible

stay flexible stellar kent

 

When investing in patent award frames and display features, make sure you leave room for expansion! A clever display option is the rail system. The patent is framed and can slide on rails so the display can be easily changed when a new patent display is ready to be added.

 

These systems are wall mounted and easy to modify. The display can go up or out as you prefer as long as you have space, so keep innovating!

 

Promoting Innovation

promoting innovation stellar kent

 

There are many ways to promote innovative thinking and to reward patent recipients. Motorola offers cash bonuses to employee inventors, one when the patent is submitted and another when it is awarded.

 

Celebrating these examples of employee innovation and highlighting the time and effort required for the initial filing encourages other innovative thinkers on your team.

 

Encourage Everyone to Be An Inventor

encourage inventor stellar kent

 

An inventor is someone who sees a problem and comes up with a new solution. Not all inventive thinking will qualify for a patent, but creative problem solving can help your bottom line if it saves time or reduces the steps in a process.

 

Innovation Can’t Be Forced

innovation forced stellar kent

 

When trying to encourage innovation, it’s important to remember to promote solitude and quiet. The ability of your employees to step back from a series of disruptive problems and let their ideas percolate is a great way to increase their problem-solving skills.

 

Additionally, encourage your employees to engage in mobile breaks; that is, to get up and move around. Walking is physical exercise, but it’s also a habit that we learned early and have relied on over time. By putting the problem you need to solve into your brain and letting it percolate while you engage in an habitual behavior, you can increase your inventive powers. Ever had an “aha” moment in the shower? Showering is a habit that takes no thought, so your brain can kick out good ideas with ease.

 

Innovation Helps 

innovation helps stellar kent

 

Inflexibility leads to stagnation. Is it important to follow the rules? Absolutely. Is it also important to review the rules? Also true! Once a process becomes rote, it’s time to think about it differently, adjust the process and come up with a better result using less resources.

 

Celebrate Innovation!

 

Your innovators can help your business move forward. Expanding your capabilities will strengthen your organization and improve your bottom line, so be sure to celebrate both your innovative employees and those who support them!

Tips for Establishing the Right Patent Strategy for Your Company

by Leave a Comment

Your patent strategy determines how well you will protect your business’s intellectual property. These innovations and inventions could leak out to your competition and the general public and may end up profiting others if you do not have a solid plan to protect them. Patents are generally issued to the first-to-file basis. This means that the first organization to present the documentation of the patent request becomes the owner of the invention even if the invention was created by someone else. There is also no single country patent that covers the whole world. That is why it is important to come up with a global patent strategy to cover every country where you offer goods and services.

 

You do not want years of research and development to go to waste. Here are a few tips to help you establish an effective strategy for your company. 

 

  1. Search for similar technology or innovation

     

Before undertaking the long patenting process it is important that you scan the market for similar innovations or technologies. A proper search will identify patent publications and related literature that is associated with your innovation. It is at this point that you will also find possible patent infringement risk as well as potential competitors once you start offering products or services. Doing this will help you to draft a patent application that will go through. Start creating a patent strategy only after you have ascertained that your innovation is new and original. Otherwise, you may lose time and money when running after already available innovation.

 

  1. Prioritize when and where to patent

 

Most businesses, especially software startups are not in a hurry to patent their original works. Unfortunately, they realize too late when someone comes up with a similar innovation and patents it. Developing a patent strategy should be prioritized to avoid as soon as you come up with an innovation to avoid such a situation. Come up with criteria for determining if the innovation is valuable enough for patenting. Since the patenting process might not come cheap, not every small innovation requires patenting. Just patent those ideas that are likely to bring substantial revenue to the company.


When it comes to selling your services and products abroad, determine which countries you should patent your innovations. Do market research on the size of the potential market in the said country and possible value that you might get from selling products in the country. Do not waste cash on patenting technologies in countries with a small potential market.

An easy way to patent your invention internationally is the use of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PTC). This is a streamlined patenting system that gives access to over 140 patent offices around the world without having to visit each office. However, the decision to grant a patent lies solely on the country to which you apply for it. Using the PCT, you can get patents for up to 148 countries within a year after applying for a national patent.

 

  1. Increase the value of your patent strategy by creating a patent portfolio

 

Create a patenting portfolio that puts in place procedures to follow when entering new markets. Building a patent portfolio is vital especially when formulating a patent strategy for startups. The portfolio includes a combination of design patents, crown-jewel patents, and fence patents. Each type of patterns has a value that it brings to the company.

A patent portfolio protects the core processes, business practices, and technologies. It is in the portfolio that your business comes with cost-cutting measures by organizing patents in terms of their value and urgency with which the patent application will be pursued.

Develop patenting strategies for your portfolio to counter the political, social and impediments that come with international patenting processes. This enables you to perceive the risks involved and determine when to stop the process.

There should be a patent administrator who coordinates the functions of the patent review committee. The review committee should include members from the business management team, finance department, and departments where the invention will be used or is put to task. The members should be committed to ensuring that the inventions contained in your patent portfolio are guarded and a decision made with best intentions at heart.

 

  1. Develop a strategy for disclosure

 

Unless you have applied for a patent for your innovation, you lose the patent rights as soon as you disclose your innovation. A few countries including the U.S give a one-year grace period for application of a patent after the public disclosure of the innovation.
You may be forced to share some of the information about your innovation in the course of doing business or getting into trade agreements. That is why it is important to come up with ways of having everyone sign non-disclosure agreements even for innovations that are on the pipeline. Once the organization is satisfied that the innovation is valuable, you should file a patent before you present it for test marketing. Your disclosure strategy should contain a method of screening your audience, the signing of the non-disclosure agreements and ways to seek payment for damages should any member of the audience leak the information provided.

 

  1. Determine a way to differentiate between innovations that require patenting and trade secrets

 

You should apply for a patent for any process or change that can easily be duplicated or reverse engineered to determine the steps that were followed. However, there other processes that are hard to replicate or cannot be reverse engineered. Such processes can be maintained as trade secrets rather than being patented. This is because there is little likelihood that someone will get all the steps right to duplicate the product.
You should come up with a way to differentiate ideas that can be patented and what can be kept as a trade secret. You may formulate rules to separate different ideas as well as analyze possible risks that come with following each decision to the business. Here are other things that you need to keep in mind when differentiating the two:

 

  • What is the likely lifespan of the innovation?

 

If software or any other product is likely to be overtaken by events in the near future (in less than ten years), there may not be a need to patent the idea. However, if there is a potential risk that the technology may be modified to create other innovations in the future, you may decide to patent your idea.

 

  • Is it a modified idea?

 

Is your concept derived from another process? While you may steer clear of any other innovations done in the past, you may have a hard time convincing the patent office that the idea is really original. To avoid the wastage of time and resources, have a team that looks at literature and other information to determine if such improvements warrant a patent application or should remain a secret.


The patenting process is quite long and complex. You may run into delays and cancellations for simple errors of omission or inadequate documentation. Delays applying for a patent and disclosure mistakes may cause you to lose hold of important intellectual properties. Therefore, it is essential to seek the assistance of a qualified patent consultant in every stage of the patenting process. Contact Stellar Kent for assistance, information, and advice on various aspects of the patenting process or strategy formulation. Remember, it takes a robust patent strategy to benefit from your innovative ideas.

12 Things You Should Know about Creating an In-House Patent Program

by Leave a Comment

For companies that bring new products to market, setting up an in-house patent program is a great way to acknowledge and reward the creative thinkers that boost your bottom line. People who can come up with new products and processes to expand your production capacities are invaluable and should be celebrated.

 

1) Do Your Homework

 

However, if your patent award program management system includes monetary compensation, you will need to put some rules in process on the front end and carefully monitor those listed on the patent.

 

For example, you may need to implement pre-employment disclosures to be agreed upon before hiring your designers and engineers. The goal of these disclosures is to make sure that both parties (potential employee and potential employer) are aware of possible awards and ultimate ownership of the patent.

 

2) Invest In Good Data Gathering

 

One of the hallmarks of a successful creative team is the ability to have idea-churning meetings where everyone is able to speak freely. This type of communication is critical to any organization hoping to move forward with new products and processes.

 

Make sure to have good record-keeping habits at these meetings. Should one of these ideas develop into a patentable product, you will want to be able to go back and gather the names of those who were in on the ground floor. When it comes time to celebrate or hand out monetary awards, you will have backup for your decisions to award corporate patent awards.

 

3) Stay Transparent

 

While not everyone on the creative team may qualify for a cash award, you can structure your patent awards to the recipients and expand the award footprint to include your implementation team, including lab techs and administrative support.

 

4) Due Diligence

 

One of the more challenging processes for an in-house patent counsel is confirming that everyone listed on the patent was actually involved in the creation of the product. It’s natural for co-workers who spend a lot of hours together to want to support and promote one another, but not everyone on the team is actually an inventor.

 

In-house patent practitioners will need to carefully review and connect with all members of the design and development team to be listed on the patent. If, in your fiduciary responsibility to the company, you have to omit someone, you will need to successfully defend that decision.

 

5) Be Prepared For The Long Haul

 

Patents take time. From initial filing to rejection or allowance, the US Patent and Trade Office tries to reply within 12 months. This time period may include a great deal of back and forth and communication with multiple offices and people, so stay flexible.

 

6) Document Your Steps

 

Your responsibilities in submitting patent applications and monitoring communications thereafter include careful monitoring of your support staff and subordinates. If there is a breakdown in this communication process, you can be denied access to patent submittals or even suspended.

 

For in-house IP professionals, balancing the demands of employer, designers/engineers and the patent office can be challenging. Keep your cool, monitor your subordinates and track your communications.

 

7) Celebrate Milestones

 

Submitting the application is a great milestone, and “patent pending” is an exciting place to be! When celebrating this initial step, be sure to celebrate everyone involved in the submittal process. Public receptions and office parties are a great way to include both designers and the support team.

 

8) Make Things Visible

 

Once a patent is pending, make it visible. Even though you won’t get a certificate when a patent is pending, consider creating a simple poster that you can mark up as milestones are reached.

 

9) Make Things Permanent

 

Once the patent is awarded and you have your organization has received the reward, make it permanent! Create a wall of success for employees and guests alike to note and enjoy this award.

 

There are multiple options for setting up a patent display wall. If your organization has the goal of receiving many patents, be sure to start this display in a place that it can easily be expanded.

 

10) When It’s Time To Renew

 

Patent renewal fees are not cheap, so it’s important to monitor the necessary renewal windows to avoid being hit with a surcharge. Additionally, there may be patents that can be allowed to lapse as the proprietary data is no longer in use by the organization.

 

Do the legwork early to make sure leadership is aware of renewals and fees coming up. Paying an unnecessary renewal fee or letting a critical patent lapse could be extremely costly to your organization.

 

11) Monitor Patent History

 

Your patent incentive award program can get a terrific boost during renewal season. This is an ideal time to bring in retired employees for a visit or reconnect with those who’ve left under positive circumstances back into the facility to celebrate patent renewals.

 

12) Recruiting Possibilities

 

Creative, visionary employees are hard to find and harder to keep. You won’t know if a former employee would consider returning until you ask, and a renewal party is a great time to remind them of how well treated they were by your organization.

 

In addition, this part of your patent reward program will encourage younger employees to look long-term and make a deeper commitment to the organization. The apprentices, interns and new hires of today may well be your design team of tomorrow, so let the newest employees see their chance to build a successful future with your organization.

Building a successful in-house patent program takes time and dedication to detail. You can promote this program by making success visible. For your business to grow, you need to be constantly improving and advancing your product line. By including all of your employees in this crucial area of growth, you can build a bright future of innovation.

Best Practices for Patent Royalty Compensation Plans

by Leave a Comment

Innovative employees are the backbone of corporate progress and success because they come up with inventions that push the business forward. Unless you want your top inventor to be poached by a competitor, you have to show such employees gratitude. You can reward the worker with a bonus, a plaque within the office premises, or hold a patent celebration for them. Although the patent to an employee’s invention generally belongs to the firm, you have to create a compensation plan that’ll make sure that the inventor gets what he or she deserves.

 

Why You Need Patent Royalty Compensation Plans

 

Your employees know the value of their invention, and if they suspect that you are making a lot of money from it without giving them their deserved share, they might sue out of frustration. Even when the angry employee knows that they may not win the lawsuit, they might go for it. Of course, it won’t cost the company much in terms of legal fees, but it will damage your reputation. Thus, you need to take care of your inventors.

 

Best Practices for Patent Royalty Compensation Plans

 

    1. Let your employees know that once they come up with an invention, they are obliged to sign their ownership rights over to the company. They can do this by signing an invention assignment form. That way, the management can market and use the invention as they see fit without going back and forth with the inventor over its usage.

 

 

    1. Let your employees know that you are there to support and protect them if they come up with a great idea or invention. When your workers know that you’ll be there for them, they’ll be encouraged to innovate and invent. Offer to pay for their patent application fees and let your attorney explain to the worker about the different patent options and the one most suitable for their invention.

 

 

    1. An employee should also reveal details of his or her creation in the invention disclosure form. Make sure that you make this document as short as possible so that workers are encouraged to complete it. Some of the important details are an illustration of the technology, its functionality, its edge against similar products in the market, design process, date of creation, whether the technology was up for sale before signing the disclosure form, and other questions that the management may find necessary. This document is used as proof that the employee signed over the ownership rights of their invention.

 

 

    1. If you want your employees to know that you take innovation seriously, you need to set up a patent committee of not more than 5 people to go through submitted inventions and either approve, reject, or return them for modifications. This committee can review the inventions once per month or after every 3 months. Additionally, the committee needs to be made up of employees with a high sense of secrecy so that competitors are not aware of your plans. They should also come from different departments to avoid biased decisions.

 

 

    1. Since patent application tends to be expensive, set a specific number of patents that your would like to file every year. This way, you can set aside money for patent application when preparing your budget. This strategy also determines the amount of money to be allocated to the Research and Development (R&D) department since they are the ones responsible for most of the inventions. The money is used in research and the creation of prototypes.

 

 

    1. Once your firm’s patent licensing becomes successful, hold a ceremony to award the team that took the time and effort to make the idea a reality. If it was one person’s effort, congratulate them and let their colleagues know that the name on the patent is the employee’s. Innovation incentives like this one encourage employees to be more open to share their ideas with the company since they know that you will acknowledge their efforts openly.

 

 

  1. If your firm deals with artists or musicians or writers, you have to agree on the royalty rates before you even publish or produce their work. Sit down with the client and do the royalty fee calculation. Make sure that you agree on a royalty payment before your attorneys or agents to avoid future legal troubles.

 

 

Compensating inventors for their efforts should be a priority for your firm. The current business environment is very competitive and technology driven; therefore, innovative employees are your most prized asset.

If you have any questions, contact to learn more.

 

How to Distinguish Individual and Team Contributions to Innovation

by Leave a Comment

Every organization is populated with innovative thinkers, but how do you support both individual and team contributions? Teams are built on trust. If your reward process doesn’t distribute rewards fairly, you may make it harder for your innovative teams to maintain effective communication and can even damage the trust you need for teams to function at their peaks.

 

Make Things Visible for Your Entire Organization

 

Celebrating the award of a new patent with your team is easy with a great professional display. No matter the size or layout of your facility, a quality display team can help you put up a featured display of your patent history on a patent wall-of-fame for everyone to see as they enter your space. This will also boost morale for your innovative employees!

 

Invest in Private Wins As Well

 

Obviously there are different levels of involvement in the patent application process. If you know a project was completed successfully as a direct result of one particular person, a private award given to that team member in a manner they will most appreciate is a great choice.

 

Tailoring Award Presentations

 

Different personalities appreciate different forms of awards. Many people would be happy to attend a big party and accept a personalized award for the patent wall in front of the whole organization. For others, this would be akin to torture.

 

When selecting awards for individuals, be sure to account for their recognition preferences and keep things as creative as possible. Yes, you want to be fair, but singling out winners who don’t care for public events will not be appreciated.

 

Additionally, take care when offering cash payouts for patent involvement. This can become very costly if you’re trying to reward an entire team. Additionally, for many employees a cash “bump” is less of a reward than the gift of time away from work would be.

 

Finally, when offering patent awards to individuals who put in time on a patent project, be extremely specific. If one member of the team is being singled out, make sure to reward them specifically for a particular set of actions and make this explanation public to avoid future rifts in the team.

 

Rewards as Group Celebrations

 

Offering patent recognition to a team is easier if you poll the team to determine exactly the sort of recognition they’d like to receive! In addition to giving a truly appreciated reward, you can watch this team function on a “fun” project.

 

Remember, teams function best when roles are defined and members are able to communicate. One fun option when putting together a team celebration is to put the last person hired or lowest person in the hierarchy in a leadership post for a fun event. This simple change could embolden junior team members to function more confidently in the workplace.

 

Protect And Guard Trust Between Team Members

 

Innovative thinkers don’t always hit home runs, but unspoken ideas are always failures. Open  communication is critical for successful team advancement. When recognizing individual contributions to a team, encourage leadership (particularly leadership in charge of patent plaques and other tangible awards) to cite specific examples of successes and contributions when giving public awards.

 

In addition, do your best to avoid isolating your innovative thinkers from the rest of the organization. Admittedly, this can be a challenge as innovators can tend to self-isolate. This isolation can sometimes result in a communication silo, limiting your agility and crimping off the flow of ideas.

 

Communication silos damage your business by

 

  • causing teams to lose sight of the big picture

 

  • forcing people to work towards goals that don’t align with their personal values

 

  • creating duplicate (and unnecessary) lines of work

 

  • damaging trust and increasing uncertainty

 

Promoting individual recognition and team performance doesn’t have to come from the leadership. Peer-to-peer recognition is a great tool for celebrating all contributions, but there must be good communication within and between departments for peer-to-peer recognition to work well.

Innovative workplaces must engage in a free flow of ideas for the best ones to come to the surface. To get lots of ideas bouncing around so the best ones can clear the net, you need to encourage trust between team members and to establish a place of intellectual safety.

 

By all means, celebrate your new patents and offer both individual and team awards to everyone involved in the application process. Whenever possible, offer awards tailored to the recipients’ preferences. Finally, remember that individual and team contributions should be well defined so that everyone involved can find their own path to the party!

The Ultimate Guide for a Successful Patent Recognition Program

by Leave a Comment

Developing an effective patent recognition program that celebrates everyone involved with the patent is a great way to build morale and promote innovative thinking, resulting in more successful patents.

Each employee in your organization should be expected to (and invited to) put their best ideas forward. In fact, it is important to create a culture that encourages ideas. Set aside a portion of meetings to allow for free thought and idea flow. Avoid judgment to ensure that everyone feels able to contribute.

When designing your patent awards program, you must first determine the methods you’ll use to celebrate these milestones. For example, rewards can be:

  • Monetary, or
  • Tangible gifts, such as desktop awards, or
  • Public events, like a party or open house, or
  • Any combination of the three.

No matter what programs or perks you set up, it’s critical that your employees know and understand what to expect as they embark on the design and development process. In addition, support staff must be aware of the possible rewards they could be entitled to under your recognition program.

Lay the Groundwork

If monetary compensation will be part of the patent award process, make sure to define this before you hire a new designer or engineer. You should prepare formal notification for your new hire of what they can expect as a named patent contributor, and of what your company will retain once this award is given.

In fact, make sure to refresh this award agreement during annual review season. Misunderstandings about compensations can result in hard feelings and resentment and may even cost you valuable employees. If there are miscommunications about this issue, you may lose team trust and miss out on great ideas during design and development meetings. Be sure to clarify the agreement up front and in writing.

Make sure that your employees are aware that contributors to an invention will need to be reviewed before compensation can be issued. You want your employees to be well-versed and able to speak about the invention, particularly if they are to be named on the patent.

Timing the Compensation

Many employers offer staggered compensation for new patents. For example, in each of the following steps, an employer may choose to both celebrate and compensate the employees involved:

  • The part is reviewed by senior management and deemed patentable
  • The patent is submitted
  • The patent is approved

Of course, the process of creating new products is quite involved, and the patent process further extends this timeline. Leadership must determine how to compensate employees who

  • Leave the organization voluntarily, by quitting or retiring
  • Move up in the organization, or get promoted to another department
  • Are forced to leave the organization due to illness or forced retirement

When developing your patent recognition program, compensation is probably the most delicate issue you will have to handle. While exciting to think that your new creators and inventors will never want to leave, move to another city, or start their own business, this is highly unlikely.

Whatever your determination is in terms of a compensation cut-off, make sure that this plan is approved via an attorney and encourage every new-hires to have the document reviewed by their own attorney. New employees will feel safer putting all of their creative forces to work for your organization if they know exactly how and when they’ll be compensated.

Of course, your organization’s leadership team will want the option to offer awards to any employee that goes that extra mile.

Make Space for Discretionary Awards

The boss is the boss, so if they want to make room for a discretionary award, set this up as a private bonus option when giving out corporate patent awards. Not everyone who contributes to the patent process is a designer. Support staff can be incredibly useful to company designers and engineers, freeing up time and space for visionary workers and thinkers to create.

Many awards can be given to let employees know that their contributions are both noted and appreciated. Anything from a cash bonus to a public award can be used to reward an employee’s contribution. Additionally, don’t forget to give some time off for a great contribution!

If there are policies in place that forbid giving cash bonuses to a member of support staff, leaders can find creative ways around this. A travel gift is a simple non-cash bonus that is loaded with value. This award, paired with time off, is an excellent option if cash giving is not possible. Stay flexible and let the employee determine their time off and destination.

Leaders should obviously have the right to reward contributing employees who go above and beyond to help the design team achieve more. The choice of how to present these awards will also require some review.

Know Your Employees

When planning a patent celebration, make sure to choose an award type and presentation style that will work for particular employees. Not everyone is excited to receive their patent involvement awards in front of a large crowd. In fact, this type of event can cause anxiety for many employees!

Everyone has their own work personality and gift-receiving preferences. There are many simple surveys and quizzes you can administer to determine how your employees prefer to be rewarded.

A new employee has enough to deal with during the onboarding process, and you may not get an accurate read of their appreciation preferences at this time. Consider administering an appreciation quiz to make sure that you’re actually celebrating, rather than punishing, your employees.

Top Down Awards

In an effort to appear fair, leaders must keep things as consistent as possible. Although this can make it difficult to customize an awards presentation, you can still individualize custom patent awards to ensure that every member of the patent team receives meaningful recognition.

Tangible rewards from leadership can be handed out during public ceremonies or during company meetings, per your employees’ gifting style preferences. Again, the company can work hierarchically. Celebrating individual staff with individual patent desktop awards, rewarding the entire department with patent plaques, and promoting the entire organization with new notices on the patent wall of success is a great way to involve the whole organization in the party.

Leaders in your organization may feel a bit constrained if they are not able to go above and beyond to reward an employee who put Herculean effort into a patent creation. Thus, leaders can increase the award by thoroughly studying and understanding the employee’s preferred reward style.

For example, if an employee would prefer paid time off after the patent is received, leaders can help them find a time to get away and perhaps add a private vacation allowance compensation to be used while the employee is away. This is a great way to reward your employees and offer them a valuable break.

Do a Little Detective Work

Before determining which team members will be recognized and compensated, it’s important to understand what everyone’s contribution actually was. You’ll need to do a bit of snooping by reviewing meeting minutes and engineer’s notes.

If you’re handing out cash compensation to every member of an engineering team is fairly simple. However, depending on the department size and number of employees, this can be cost prohibitive.

Not everyone is an inventor. If there’s a member on the patent team that will be recognized who wasn’t at the design or development meetings, you may need to interview that person to confirm that their award is valid and well-deserved.

Should you find that this person is not well-versed or aware of the newly patented or patent pending product, their inclusion in the group should be reconsidered. Yes, employees may want to include everyone in the award loop, but leadership must be fair and hand out awards to those who were truly involved.

If leadership needs to omit someone from the patent award loop, the entire team should be notified about why. This won’t be easy, but being up front about this decision will ultimately produce better involvement and may spur greater collaboration between all members of the design and development team.

When making this notification, you can make it clear that inventors with traceable involvement will be rewarded consistently for their participation. It’s also critical to notify those who will be omitted from compensation why they won’t receive their additional cash and how to ensure they are on the compensation list in the future.

Peer to Peer Awards

When determining the best patent recognition options, don’t forget to make space (and budget) for peer-to-peer recognition. Some employees at your firm may offer tremendous benefits to their fellow employees but may never get to be a part of the patent team.

Encourage leaders on design and development teams to consider small personal gifts such as acrylic patent awards or patent trophies for helpful staff outside the engineering department. These can be given privately from one employee to another or with a simple note from management.

These awards can be given to your implementation team, support staff, and even the paralegals and attorneys who work directly with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Great ideas often go nowhere without great implementation people, so keep them in the award loop and celebrate!

Everyone works better with a bit of appreciation. Further, making room in the budget for these type of awards can reduce isolation and separation that can sometimes build up between engineering and the rest of your organization.

Individual Award Options

No matter who’s giving the award, there are many terrific display options to visually and tangibly reward individuals. Again, this is a great opportunity to customize your rewards.

You will have some employees who like to spread out in their workspace and need every inch of desk or table top space for their work. In this case, wall-mounted inventor plaques are a great option. You can celebrate this person without getting in their way, and everyone visiting their space will get to see their award!

For those who like everything to be in a particular place, or who have a work space that’s visible to the public, awards such as patent cubes can remind that person of their value to the organization and be a great conversation starter when clients or potential customers enter your facility.

Make a Splash in Public!

When designing your patent award program management system, be sure to prepare for patent displays that will draw visitor eyes. You can create a modular patent wall-of-fame that not only displays your company patents but makes it clear that you’ve got more coming.

For example, you can display your certificates on a modular rail system that makes it possible to move patent award frames down the row as new patents are added. Framed patent certificates are mounted and mobile. This display will travel down the wall, so you can use an entire hall to display your patent wall of fame. Your business is growing, so celebrate and promote this expansion!

If you’re just starting out, have only collected a few patents, or if space is simply limited at the moment, you can display your patent awards in a smaller matrix display frame. This frame is just over 24” wide and 54″ tall. You can fill it with up to 80 small display plaques. When the 81st patent arrives, add another matrix!

Finally, consider requesting a customized patent display layout. Each and every organization is different and includes multiple contributors. In fact, you can build a display loaded with both small magnetic display plaques and large framed certificates.

Public Vs. Private Celebrations

Obviously, if you’ve got patents, you’re sitting on proprietary information as an organization. The details of your awards must stay protected when presented to the public.

At the employee celebration, take care to be open. When presenting awards, offer data on the time commitment and extra workload this patent award required. Information that goes out with a press release may only include a photo of your employees with their personal awards, but sharing information about the entire product development and patent process is critical, particularly if engineering and design are a separate unit of your organization.

Go for Good Press

Your marketing team will no doubt generate a press release when your new patent is awarded, but be sure to also get plenty of photos and video from the patent open house or party.

No matter how secretive or proprietary your company’s output may be, it has a public face. Recruiters and potential employees will make note of your successes and celebrations, so make sure to document and promote the results of these events.

Seeing happy employees celebrating and being rewarded for patent work is a great way to draw in other inventive, knowledgeable employees. This imagery can be used to recruit new employees and can easily add interest to your website or company newsletters.

Celebrate Patent Renewals

Your existing patents will need to be renewed regularly to keep your proprietary information safe. When it comes time to renew, celebrate this event!

When possible, include the named people on the patent. This is a great time to bring in former employees that are in good standing to remind them of your appreciation. Retired employees may enjoy an invitation to visit, and employees who’ve moved on may want to reconsider.

Inventive talent is hard to come by and can be a challenge to retain. By celebrating patent renewals, you can keep the doors of communication open with former employees and perhaps win them back.

What if a Patent Isn’t Going to Be Renewed?

If the product covered by a patent is no longer profitable or marketable, the best business decision is to let it drop. However, this may be a good time to review the product and connect with your design team.

Generating a replacement product for the dropped item could become a new goal for your engineering or development team. Of course, any remaining employees involved in the patenting of the obsolete item should be involved in any new development meetings and ultimate decisions.

This senior employee could use the new creation project to involve any apprentices or interns in the creation process. Of course, once the new patent has been applied for and approved, all members of this team should be celebrated and compensated per the terms of their hiring agreement.

By building on the technologies (and expertise) of obsolete inventions, you help the next generation of creative employees learn the frustrations of patent seeking and help your senior employees share their expertise.

Have Some Fun!

Patents are serious business and a lot of hard work, but be sure to have some fun with the award process. For example, if part of your patent compensation plan includes time off, invest in a patent trophy you can use as a stand-in for an employee taking a well-deserved day away from the office.

This trophy can roam the office, letting everyone know that the missing employee is celebrating their reward day away from their desk! If the employee is headed for the beach, deliver the trophy with some gag gifts, such as sunblock or a straw hat. Skiers would appreciate earmuffs and some chapstick. Someone headed out for a cruise might enjoy a good book or a sleeping mask. If no members of the leadership team have time to find the right silly gift, connect with one of the party people in the office and hand the task over to them.

This silly trophy and any small gifts included will brighten up your traveling employee’s day and give other employees the courage to put their ideas forward.

Play with Patent Pending

Once the patent is submitted and is pending, find a spot to put up a temporary display of the submission process. As milestones occur, or if the legal team has to host additional communication or send additional documents, make sure to display these steps.

There are many steps to getting your patent approved, so why not celebrate the process and the people who move patents forward?

If you have multiple patents pending, consider creating a displayed timeline that gives everyone a heads-up about what the patent is for, who’s on the team and when the submission was made. Should one name come up repeatedly, you now have information you can act on.

First of all, this person should be celebrated! Secondly, are there members of your team that aren’t comfortable putting forward their ideas? You may need to alter the style and order of creative meetings to give everyone a say.

What are your next steps?

Your organization is an innovative, inventive place, loaded with great thinkers and dedicated implementation professionals. To effectively support them and celebrate their successes, work with a great patent award professional organization.

By putting together a consistent and effective patent recognition program, you can celebrate your company’s newest inventions while encouraging all of your employees to bring their best ideas forward for your next success.

Why Patent Reward Systems Require More than Just Money

by Leave a Comment

Innovation is crucial to maintaining your company’s growth, and patent reward systems are a great way to keep your innovators happy. While you likely have hiring agreements in place to define how employees who earn patents are compensated, how can you reward them without breaking the bank?

Invest In Your Teams

It’s important to remember that design-thinking and successful creative output doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Corporate patent awards should obviously focus on successful creation and on the creator, but support teams make the creator’s job possible.

Having quality support teams in place gives your innovative thinkers the mental space to produce and act on new ideas. When establishing your patent incentive award program, make sure to celebrate everyone involved in the creation of new products.

Celebrations Along The Way

As anyone who has applied for a patent knows, patent application isn’t easy. Even more, once you’ve received your patent, it still needs to be maintained.

Innovative thinkers and the employees who support them benefit from corporate support in each step of the way. This can include anything from a party to a plaque.

Make Things Visible

Display company patent awards prominently so that both clients and employees can see your organization’s innovative output. Manufacturing in the developed world must continuously expand and grow to stay in business, so if your customers note your ability to flex and grow, you have a better shot at keeping existing customers and getting new ones.

Innovative patent display structures do not need to be permanent or fixed. In fact, company patent award can be as small as desktop awards or as large as full display walls.

Display the Process

As noted above, getting a patent isn’t easy. Why not celebrate both your innovative thinkers and your support personnel by celebrating throughout the patent application timeline?

For example, you could display a simple leaderboard that indicates

  • the initial application (or provisional app, if this is your first step)
  • the country(ies) of application
  • approval steps
  • successes along the way
  • finally, the patent award!

Making this process visible celebrates innovating thinking, reminds all your employees that getting a patent requires a large investment by the company, and demonstrates the ongoing work of your patent support personnel.

Keep Participation Options Open

Never limit idea gathering to engineers or R&D professionals. Great ideas can come from anyone in your business. Additionally, when collecting patentable ideas, make sure the meeting isn’t too serious. No matter your industry, happy people that feel free to express themselves will always come up with more ideas than people who are afraid to present their thoughts.

Privacy and Compensation Issues

If your employee patent compensation plan includes a cash bonus, consider leaving this payment out of your patent celebrations and milestone parties. If a cash payment is standard, inventors will be made aware of this when they sign on with your organization.

If your employee patent compensation plan includes a cash bonus, consider leaving this payment out of your patent celebrations and milestone parties. If a cash payment is standard, inventors will be made aware of this when they sign on with your organization.

Your patent rewards should offer everyone on the patent team the opportunity to be celebrated and recognized. Rather than focusing on the cash payout to the inventor or invention team, you can lift the spirits of the entire organization by celebrating everyone’s involvement and ultimate success.

Patents Keep Business Moving Forward

Companies, particularly manufacturing companies in the developed world, simply can’t survive without innovation. To pay competitive rates and keep employees well compensated, innovation must be a constant.

In fact, patent compensation plans have been in discussion in the government private sectors for years. Promoting innovation by compensating innovative thinkers has long been a goal.

We’re Here To Help

Our patent recognition experts are here and ready to help. From desktop displays to patent walls, we can help you proudly display your company’s innovative work and employees.

Each and every company is unique, both in output, structure and personality. By celebrating your organization’s innovative process, you can continue to build a culture of excellence and innovation.

Setting up a patent-incentive program can include anything from regular idea “harvesting” meetings to “patent path” celebrations as milestones are achieved. You decide what investments to make, both in public celebrations and private compensation.

By putting together patent reward systems that promote both innovative thinking and rewards for those supporting the development process, you can direct your entire organization onto a path of innovation and constant growth.