David Winwood

This patenting step is absolutely crucial for the commercialization of inventions. In the absence of a strong intellectual property system – specifically patents – most of those inventions will never see the light of day. Why is that? The answer is quite simple – the cost to develop those inventions to a marketable product are significant and in the absence of intellectual property protections that the patent system provides, no one will ever invest in the promise of an invention. Said another way, how many of you would invest in a company that will spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars on a product knowing that a competitor will be free to offer the same product at a fraction of the cost since they invested substantially less in R&D?